creating a wallet on a 2nd device

[Reiver236]

I have an Electrum wallet on my PC with a small amount of BTC available. I'd like to install the Android version on my phone so that I can access the same BTC from either wallet, but am wondering how to go about this in the correct way. A few questions occur to me:

- should I create a new 'standard' wallet using the same seed as the original?
- alternatively, should I be exporting, then importing, addresses/keys?
- can/should the wallet have the same name, or doesn't it matter?
- are there issues re syncing?

Sorry to be asking such dumb questions, but if someone could point me to a step by step guide, then it would be a great help - I surely can't be the only one...;-)
Many thanks for any clues.
John

[TryNinja]

You don’t create a new standard wallet. You just restore it from your seed in the app and the wallet will be the same.

[Lucius]

~snip~

No question is stupid, especially when it comes to extremely sensitive things like these.

The process of creating an identical wallet on another device is quite simple, all you need is your seed and to follow few simple steps. If you create standard wallet on your Electrum desktop, then you will use that option on Electrum Android, and then you will select option that you have seed and enter seed words.

Since your seed is generated from Electrum, next step should not be important for you - but in link I post you can see the whole process step by step. If you don't understand something or have any doubts, feel free to ask a question.

https://bitcoinelectrum.com/restoring-your-standard-wallet-from-seed/

[Reiver236]

@Lucius and @TryNinja
Many thanks both and that seems to have done the job - yay!

I'm going to put in a good word for the University of Cyprus who have been running a series of MOOCs in Cryptocurrency. I'm trying to work my way through one at the moment. I guess I'm learning a lot, but also learning how much I don't know...
...hence my cautious question to this forum as it's so easy to make a major, ahem, blunder!

Thanks again for your help.

[Abdussamad]

@Lucius and @TryNinja
Many thanks both and that seems to have done the job - yay!

I'm going to put in a good word for the University of Cyprus who have been running a series of MOOCs in Cryptocurrency. I'm trying to work my way through one at the moment. I guess I'm learning a lot, but also learning how much I don't know...
...hence my cautious question to this forum as it's so easy to make a major, ahem, blunder!

Thanks again for your help.

Since you are learning I suggest creating a watch only wallet on your phone using your PC wallet's master public key which you can get via wallet > information > click on QR code icon in the bottom right. Then on android go to standard wallet > use master key > scan the QR code and voila! You now have a read only wallet that you can use to receive bitcoins and keep track of transactions but not spend the coins. This way the risk that comes from having your seed on multiple devices is eliminated.

[bertshowell]

I have a similar, but slightly different question.

I have an offline wallet set up on a dedicated, disconnected machine, to sign transactions when spending is required. I created a watching wallet on a desktop PC, using the public key from the offline wallet.

Can I also set up a second watching wallet on another laptop? This would be useful if travelling.

If I do create another watching wallet, will the 2 watchers keep in step in some way? I'm reluctant to just try as I don't want to lose or split transaction history.

[DireWolfM14]

Can I also set up a second watching wallet on another laptop?
~
If I do create another watching wallet, will the 2 watchers keep in step in some way?

You can set up any type of wallet on as many devices as you like, whether it's a watch-only or a standard wallet.  Each specific wallet synchronizes with the blockchain every time the file is opened on it's associated device.  Like EFTbitcoin said, only the transaction history is synchronized.  Labels and frozen addresses are not synchronized between devices.

Electrum for android is very convenient for watch only wallets.  I also have a hot wallet set up on my phone and two computers.

[Abdussamad]

you use the master public key also known as extended public key to  create a watch only wallet. you don't use a public key. a public key is just for one address while an MPK/Xpub is for an entire tree of addresses.