Titles and what is engraved on a plate

What the SeedHammer II engraves on each plate, where a wallet title appears, and how to tell plates apart.

Stock firmware v1.4.3 engraves the layouts below on seed and descriptor plates. A wallet's title appears on the screen only, and the fingerprints tell the plates of one wallet apart.

Seed words are typed on the machine only and never pass through a phone, a computer or a chat assistant. A descriptor is not a secret, but it reveals every address of the wallet.

What you need

• A SeedHammer II on stock firmware v1.4.3.
• To check a plate: the wallet's descriptor or master fingerprints as your wallet app shows them.
• To see a title on the machine: a wallet export that carries the wallet name (Titles).

On every plate

• One job engraves one face of one 85 x 85 mm plate, with 3 mm free along every edge.
• No date, plate number, firmware version or wallet name (Titles).
• No plate preview in v1.4.3. The plate itself is the first view of the layout.

Passphrases and other text

• No passphrase or free text: "Input Words" takes BIP39 words only. Free text is planned for later firmware.
• Keep a passphrase in a separate backup made another way.

Seed plate

A seed plate has no derivation path or script type; those belong to the descriptor. After the checkmark on "Engrave Seed", the machine plans this layout:

• Master fingerprint. 8 capitals, 2.0 mm tall (unverified), centred above the words: 73C5DA0A for the test seed abandon x 11, about.
• Words. The word number and the whole word in capitals, for example 1 ABANDON. 2.7 mm tall on a 4.1 mm line (unverified).
• SeedQR (unverified). Standard (4 digits per word), not compact, error correction M.

Descriptor plate

• Layouts. "Engrave" lists those that fit: "TEXT + QR", "TEXT ONLY", "QR ONLY" (fit).
• Text. The rebuilt descriptor from the top left, wrapped edge to edge, case kept; lines near the top and bottom edges are shortened at the corners. 3.8 mm lines, capitals about 2.2 mm, 2.3 mm per character (unverified).
• Keys. Each key keeps its fingerprint and path in brackets, and the text ends in the machine's checksum. A key with the placeholder fingerprint 00000000 is engraved without brackets, so its path is lost too.
• QR. The descriptor without checksum, error correction L; centred alone, or top right with the text.
• Differences. h for ' and no child path: Why the plate differs. No title: Titles.
• Bare keys and shares. Send a descriptor with key origin, never a bare key (why). A codex32 share is secret: never send one over NFC (Shares).

Titles: shown, not engraved

• A title is the wallet name an export carries, and only these two kinds carry one. A plain descriptor never does, whichever app it comes from.
• Coldcard-format text without a Name: line is refused with "Unknown format". Sparrow and Specter shorten the Name: to 20 characters in their Coldcard-format exports.
• Sparrow 2.5 and later add ?bh= or ?gl= ("Unknown format"): remove it. Its Coldcard-format exports have no suffix and no child path (why).
• "Engrave Descriptor" shows the whole title, wrapped, case kept, no 18-character limit (unverified).
• No plate carries the title (unverified). The first SeedHammer engraved a title of up to 18 characters; SeedHammer II firmware from v1.4.1 on engraves none.

Tell the plates of one wallet apart

• Each seed plate carries its master fingerprint in capitals, for example 73C5DA0A.
• The descriptor text carries each cosigner's fingerprint in lower case, in brackets before its key: [73c5da0a/48h/0h/0h/2h]. A 2-of-3 made from three public test seeds holds 73c5da0a, 3f635a63 and 28645006.
• Match each seed plate to one of these; capitals and lower case are the same value. A seed used with a passphrase does not match: its plate shows the fingerprint without the passphrase.
• On a "QR ONLY" plate the fingerprints are in the QR only; a bare or 00000000 key, or an older QR, has none.

If it does not work