Starkive StudioTrust Split
Split a secret so no one holds all of it.
- Shamir's Secret Sharing
- Any k-of-n threshold
- On-device, no server
Break a passphrase, recovery phrase or exported key into shares using Shamir's Secret Sharing. You choose how many shares exist and how many are needed to rebuild it; anything fewer reveals nothing at all. It runs entirely on your machine.
Trust Split is free. It has never needed the unlock.
What it does.
- 01
Any threshold you choose
Split into n shares and require any k of them to recombine — 2-of-3 for a couple's backup, 3-of-5 for a board, whatever fits.
- 02
Below the threshold reveals nothing
This is real Shamir's Secret Sharing: with fewer than your threshold, the shares are mathematically useless, not merely hard to crack.
- 03
For backups and trustees
Hand shares to people you trust, or store them apart. No single lost or stolen share exposes the secret.
- 04
On your device
Splitting and recombining happen locally. No share or secret ever leaves your machine.
Keep enough shares to reach the threshold
If you set 3-of-5 and lose three of the shares, the secret is gone — that is the guarantee working as intended, not a bug. Store the shares so you can always gather your threshold again.
How to use it
Two numbers do all the work here, and you pick them before anything is created. Everything below happens on your machine — nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no account involved at any point.
- 01
Open Trust Split and paste the secret
Anything you can type: a passphrase, a recovery phrase, a private key, the master password to your vault. It goes in the box marked SECRET TO SPLIT and it is never written to disk in one piece.
- 02
Choose how many shares exist — the n
TOTAL SHARES is how many pieces you end up with, from 2 up to 16. Pick one per person or per place you intend to keep them: five shares for five safety-deposit boxes, three for three trustees.
- 03
Choose how many are needed — the k
NEEDED TO RECOVER is how many of those pieces must be brought together to rebuild the secret. It must be at least 2 and at most the number of shares. The line underneath spells out what you have chosen in words before you commit.
- 04
Press Create shares
You get a numbered list. Each share is a block of text with its own Copy button, and there is Copy all and Save to files… for the whole set. This is the only moment the shares exist together on one screen.
- 05
Separate them immediately
Give each share to a different person, or put it in a different place. A stack of five shares in one drawer is not a split secret, it is a secret with extra steps.
- 06
To rebuild, use Recover from shares
Switch to the second tab, paste your shares one per line, and the secret comes back. You need any k of them; it does not matter which ones, and the order does not matter either.
Choosing k and n is the whole decision
A low k is easy to recover and easy to steal. A high k is hard to steal and easy to lose forever. 2-of-3 suits a couple keeping a recovery phrase; 3-of-5 suits a board or a family; k equal to n means every single share must survive, which is usually a mistake.
Fewer than k really is nothing
This is not encryption that gets weaker as shares are collected. With k−1 shares in hand, the secret is no more constrained than it was with none — that is the mathematical property of Shamir’s scheme, not a claim about how long it would take to crack.
Shares are not secret-ish, they are secret
Any k of them together reconstruct the original exactly. Treat each one with the care you would give the secret itself, and do not email the whole set to yourself “temporarily”.
Test the recovery before you rely on it
Split something disposable first, gather the threshold, and rebuild it. Finding out that a share was truncated in a paste is much better now than during the emergency you made this for.
The others come with it.
One app, one $1.99 unlock. These are not add-ons and there is no upgrade path between them — you either have Studio or you do not.
Starkive Archive
Lock a file or folder with strong encryption — a password ZIP, a 7-Zip archive, age, or OpenPGP. It reads 13 archive formats too, so it is the only unzip tool you need as well.
Starkive PDF
A PDF is a program format, and opening one is where most of the risk in a document workflow actually sits. Starkive decodes every file in a separate process that cannot reach the network, read your files or start anything. Above that line it behaves like the desktop editor you already know.
Starkive Vault
One master password you choose, never stored and never sent. Every record is sealed on your own machine, so there is no account to breach and nothing in a cloud to leak.
Redaction
Mark the words you want removed and Starkive deletes the content underneath rather than painting a rectangle over it. It runs on your machine, in the same sandbox as everything else, and writes a new file so your original is never touched.
Authenticator
Keep your two-factor secrets next to the passwords they protect. Codes are generated on your device to the TOTP standard, sealed by the same Argon2id and AES-256 vault, and unlocked with Windows Hello or Touch ID.
Back to Starkive Studio, or see both products.