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Installing BTCRecover

There are a few basic steps to installing BTCRecover.

  1. Download and unzip the BTCRecover script

  2. Download and install Python3

  3. Install required packages via Python PIP

  4. (Optional) Install PyOpenCL module for GPU Acceleration

  5. Test your installation (Optional, but a good idea)

These steps are also covered in Videos below for each supported Operating System.

Note: Depending on your operating system and python environment, you may need to replace the python command with python3. (By default, the command to use will be python in Windows and python3 in Linux) Most non-technical users are on Windows, so all example commands will use python to match the defaults for this platform

Video Tutorials

Windows: https://youtu.be/8q65eqpf4gE

Ubuntu Linux: https://youtu.be/Met3NbxcZTU

MacOS: https://youtu.be/Qzc3oHzbcAo

1) Downloading btcrecover

Just download the latest version from https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/archive/master.zip and unzip it to a location of your choice. There’s no installation procedure for btcrecover itself, however there are additional requirements below depending on your operating system and the wallet type you’re trying to recover.

2) Install Python

Note: Only Python 3.8 and later are officially supported... BTCRecover is automatically tested with all supported Python versions (3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11) on all supported environments (Windows, Linux, Mac), so you can be sure that both BTCRecover and all required packages will work correctly. Some features of BTCRecover may work on earlier versions of Python, your best bet is to use run-all-tests.py to see what works and what doesn't...

Windows

Video Demo of Installing BTCRecover in Windows: https://youtu.be/8q65eqpf4gE

Visit the Python download page here: https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/, and click the link for the latest Python 3.10 release (Python 3.11, etc, will work, but Python 3.10 has simpler installation of required modules) release near the top of the page under the heading Python Releases for Windows. Download and run either the Windows x86 MSI installer for the 32-bit version of Python, or the Windows x86-64 MSI installer for the 64-bit one. Modern PCs should use the 64-bit version, however if you're unsure which one is compatible with your PC, choose the 32-bit one.

When installing Python in Windows, be sure to select to "Add Python to PATH" on the first screen of the installer...

Note for Large Multi-CPU Systems: Windows limits the number of possible threads to 64. If your system has more logical/physical cores than this, your best bet is to run the tool in Linux. (Ubuntu is an easy place to start)

Linux

Video Demo of Installing BTCRecover in Ubuntu Live USB: https://youtu.be/Met3NbxcZTU

Most modern distributions include Python 3 pre-installed. Older Linux distributions will include Python2, so you will need to install python3.

If you are using SeedRecover, you will also need to install tkinter (python3-tk) if you want to use the default GUI popups for seedrecover. (Command line use will work find without this package)

Some distributions of Linux will bundle this with Python3, but for others like Ubuntu, you will need to manually install the tkinter module.

You can install this with the command: sudo apt install python3-tk

If any of the "pip3" commands below fail, you may also need to install PIP via the command: sudo apt install python3-pip

If you get a message that there is no installation candidate for Python3-pip, you will need to enable the "universe" repository with the command: sudo add-apt-repository universe

You can then re-run the command to install python3-pip from above.

Enabling Native RIPEMD160 Support

As of OpenSSL v3 (Late 2021), ripemd160 is no longer enabled by default and is now part of the "Legacy" set of hash functions. In Linux/MacOS environments, the hashlib module in Python relies on OpenSSL for ripemd160, so if you want full performance in these environments, you may need modify your OpenSSL settings to enable the legacy provider.

As of July 2022, BTCRecover does include a "pure Python" implementation of RIPEMD160, but this only offers about 1/3 of the performance when compared to a native implementation via hashlib.

Video Demo of this applying fix can be found here: https://youtu.be/S3DWKp0i4i0

An example of the modified configuration file can be found here: https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/example_openssl.cnf

For more information, see the relevant issue on the OpenSSL Github repository: openssl/openssl#16994

MacOS

Video Demo of Installing BTCRecover in MacOS: https://youtu.be/Qzc3oHzbcAo

  1. Install brew via instructions at brew.sh

The Install command is:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Be sure to follow the instructions and add brew to your path...

  1. Install coincurve build requirements

The Install command is:

brew install autoconf automake libffi libtool pkg-config python python-tk

Once you have installed Python via Brew, you will need to run both Python and PIP with commands that include the full version numnber. (eg: python3.12 and pip3.12)

  1. Install Rust (Optional, but needed for requirements-full modules)

    curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

3) Install requirements via Python Pip

Once both Python3 and PIP have been installed, you can install the requirements for BTCRecover.

Essential Requirements

You will first want to install the basic packages required for BTCRecover with the command:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

This will give you the functionality needed recovery of Bitcoin/Ethereum wallets (And clones of these chains)

If when run this command, you get an error message similar to error: externally-managed-environment then you need to add an additional argument --break-system-packages to the above command. (So the command will be pip3 install -r requirements.txt --break-system-packages)

Note: If you use Python for other things beyond BTCRecover, then the --break-system-packages could cause other issues, but in such situations, managing your python virtual environments for your specific system is beyond the scope of this documentation.

If you are running Python 3.13 and get a build error you may also need to set the following environment variable.

export PYO3_USE_ABI3_FORWARD_COMPATIBILITY=1

Packages for Extended Wallet Support

Depending on your wallet type, you may also want to install the packages required for full wallet support. This is a much larger download and may also require that you install additional software on your PC for these packages to build and install.

pip3 install -r requirements-full.txt

Installing individual packages

If you are an advanced user, you may choose to install only those additional packages that are required for the specific recovery you are attempting. More information about which wallets require which packages is at the bottom of this guide.*

4) Install PyOpenCL for GPU Acceleration

GPU Support will require additional OpenCL libraries to be installed that aren't covered by the above commands...

For more information and instructions, see the GPU acceleration page here

5) Testing your Installation

Once you have downloaded and unzipped BTCRecover, installed Python and all required libraries, you can test the program with the command:

python run-all-tests.py -vv

This command will take a few minutes to run and should complete without errors, indicating that your system is ready to use all features of BTCRecover.

Wallet Python Package Requirements

If you want to install all requirements for all wallet types, you can simply use the command pip3 install -r requirements-full.txt

Locate your wallet type in the list below, and follow the instructions for only the sections listed next to your wallet.

PyCryptoDome

With the exception of Ethereum wallets, PyCryptoDome is not strictly required for any wallet, however it offers a 20x speed improvement for wallets that tag it as recommended in the list above.

Py_Crypto_HD_Wallet

This module is required for a number of different wallet types.

For Windows Users, you will also need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools befor you will be able to successfully install the module.

A video tutorial that covers this can be found here: https://youtu.be/0LMUf0R9Pi4

For MacOS and Linux users, the module should build/install just fine if you follow the installation instructions on this page for your platform.

Staking-Deposit

This module isn't available as a pre-compiled package and must be downloaded and built from source.

It is installed as part of the collection of modules installed by requirements-full.txt.

Alternately, you can attempt to download, build and install it via pip3 with the following command:

pip3 install git+https://github.com/ethereum/[email protected]

This module also requires the py_ecc module which can be installed with the command:

pip3 install py_ecc

More information can be found at its repository

Note: Some dependencies for this module won't always build if you are running the latest version of Python, if you run into build errors, you should try the previous major Python Versions until you find one that works on your system (eg: Something like 3.9)