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Creating an embedded wallet

To create an embedded wallet for your user, use the Privy Expo SDK's useEmbeddedWallet hook.

As a parameter to create, you should include an object including options for the wallet's recovery method. This recovery method will be used anytime the user interacts with their wallet on a new device. This object must at minimum contain a field called recoveryMethod, whose possible values are:

  • privy, the recovery material will be secured by Privy. This is also called automatic recovery.
  • user-passcode, the recovery share of the embedded wallet will be secured by a password provided by the user. With this recovery method, the recovery options object must also contain a field password containing the user's password as a string.
  • google-drive, the recovery secret will be backed up to the user's Google Drive account.
  • icloud, the recovery secret will be backed up to the user's iCloud account. Note: this is only supported on iOS devices.

INFO

iCloud recovery is only supported on iOS devices.

tsx
import {useEmbeddedWallet, isNotCreated} from '@privy-io/expo';

const CreateWalletButton = () => {
  const wallet = useEmbeddedWallet();

  if (isNotCreated(wallet)) {
    return <Button onPress={() => wallet.create({recoveryMethod: 'privy'})}>Create Wallet</Button>;
  }

  return null;
};
How can my app know if a user already has an embedded wallet?

To determine if the current user already has an embedded wallet, you can either:

  • obtain an object representation of the user from the Privy SDK's usePrivy hook, and check if it includes a wallet with a walletClientType of 'privy', or
  • use the Privy client's useEmbeddedWallet hook, like below:
tsx
import {useEmbeddedWallet, isConnected, needsRecovery} from '@privy-io/expo';

const Component = () => {
  const wallet = useEmbeddedWallet();
  const [password, setPassword] = useState('');

  if (isConnected(wallet)) {
    /* The user's embedded wallet exists and is ready to be used! */
    return <View>Wallet Exists</View>;
  }

  if (needsRecovery(wallet)) {
    /*
      The user's embedded wallet exists but has never been loaded on this device.
      They will need to go through the password recovery flow to use it.
    */
    return (
      <View>
        The user's embedded wallet exists but has never been loaded on this device. They will need
        to go through the password recovery flow to use it.
      </View>
    );
  }

  return null;
};
Why is wallet.create undefined or throwing a type error?
  • wallet.create will be undefined if the wallet has already been created
  • If your application uses Typescript, isNotCreated refines the type of wallet. So wallet.create will cause a type error outside a check that either isNotCreated is true or wallet.status === 'not-created'