Start with the right recovery path

What do you still have?

A useful recovery plan starts with evidence: the wallet application, the original device, the files you still have, and what you remember. Make a working copy of wallet files and keep the originals unchanged.

Write down the wallet name and approximate creation date. A file extension alone does not reliably identify its format. Also record any receiving addresses that you know belonged to this wallet; they can help confirm a seed or passphrase result.

Choose one of three paths

A device PIN, a wallet-file password, and a BIP39 passphrase are different things. A search configured for one will not automatically recover the others.

Keep the first experiment small

Install the maintained project and try a tiny example before using a real wallet copy. For password candidates, --listpass lets you inspect the generated guesses without opening a wallet. Our tokenlist tutorial starts with two invented candidates.

Expand one uncertainty at a time. If you change the wallet type, candidate rules, and derivation path all at once, you lose the ability to tell which change mattered.

Understand the limits

BTCRecover tests possibilities you describe. It cannot reconstruct an arbitrary strong password or a completely lost seed from a public address alone. Time depends on the wallet format, search size, and your hardware; a small change in the rules can multiply the search dramatically.