Update—Monday October 31, 2011: Strip Lite 1.6.1 is available once again in the App Store.

For those who stored important data in Strip Lite, and now wish to upgrade to Strip, there’s an upgrade path available.

If you’re viewing this on an iPhone OS device, you may wish to view this tutorial formatted for a smaller screen, that will take you through the steps. Otherwise, read on:

1. First, purchase Strip from the App Store.
2. When the download is complete, ensure it is installed on your iPhone or iPod Touch by syncing with iTunes.
3. Launch Strip Lite on your device and enter your password.
4. Tap the Settings gear on the bottom-right corner of the screen.
5. Tap Export Data to Strip.
6. Strip will present an alert asking if you wish to import the data from Strip Lite. Tap Yes to accept.
7. Use your Strip Lite password to log into Strip.

There sure is, click on Windows or OS X at the top of the page to download Strip for your desktop.

At the moment we only support Windows (XP and later) and OS X (10.6 and later), we have no plans to develop versions for other operating systems.

Strip for iOS

The version number of Strip is displayed at the top of the Settings screen. To get there:

1. Launch Strip (or Strip Lite) on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
2. Login to Strip with your access password.
3. Click the Settings icon (the gear) at the bottom-right corner of the screen, in the tab bar.

Strip for OS X

1. Launch Strip
2. Click on the Strip menu item in the menu bar
3. Click on the About Strip menu item

Strip for Windows

1. Launch Strip
2. Click on the Help menu item on the application window
3. Click on the About Strip menu item

Strip is a very flexible application, allowing you to store in it any data you care to type out. Currently Strip supports the storage of textual data only. When you add a new Field to an Entry you will be prompted to choose a label, dictating what type of data you are entering (password, numeric, phone number, etc). On the iOS version of Strip, these labels define behaviors in the application for certain types (e.g. launching a website). We plan to add this capability to Strip for Windows and OS X as well. If you don’t see an appropriate label for your field, you can add a new one and set the type to any of the following:

• Text Field
• Password with generator
• PIN with generator
• Multi Line Note
• URL/Website
• Numeric Field
• Email Address
• Telephone Number
• Date

These field types are provided for your convenience, and to offer you editing controls optimized for the mobile device. The generators go one step further by allowing you to generate random passwords (or numeric sequences). Email addresses can be launched in Mail, URLs can be launched by the registered application or Safari, Telephone Numbers can be launched in Phone.

We are not going to charge for bug fixes and minor product updates. If we do end up implementing a major change or enhancement to Strip, we may opt to charge for the upgrade.

Strip for iOS—Recovering from iTunes

iTunes automatically backs up data on your iPhone or iPod Touch every time you sync your device. You can read more about this process on Apple’s website. If you have lost your data on your phone and need to restore from back up, do not connect your iphone to your computer just yet! If you do, the next sync will wipe out your backup.

Follow these steps:

1. On the computer you use to sync your device, go to: iTunes → Preferences → Devices, Check “Disable automatic syncing for all iPhones and iPods.”
2. Now connect your device to your computer and it should show up in the iTunes sidebar.
3. Right-click on your device and select “Restore from backup.”

Recovering from Strip on the desktop or Strip Sync

Both Strip and Strip Sync on OS X and Windows take a back-up every time you sync with Strip on iOS, as well as allowing you to take manual back-ups on demand. You can always restore Strip on an iOS device by syncing with Strip on the desktop, and you can even overwrite the desktop with the device database. Finally, you can always revert the desktop database to one of the desktop backups.

Restore from Dropbox

Strip for iOS 1.6.0 supports a feature we call Dropbox sync. Once you sync with Dropbox, an encrypted replica of your database is created in your Dropbox folder, at /Zetetic/strip.db. Every additional sync exchanges changes with your Dropbox replica, allowing you to keep multiple devices in sync without a desktop replica. If you need to restore your device, simply set the sync mode to "Restore" and sync against your Dropbox account.

Backing up with Dropbox

Strip 1.6.0 allows you to sync your data with a Dropbox account, creating an encrypted replica of your database that you can use for restore operations in the event of data loss. When you first do a sync with Dropbox (use the basic Sync operation, not Overwrite or Restore!), a replica is created in your Dropbox folder at /Zetetic/strip.db. Each additional sync exchanges any changes with the replica since the last sync.

Backing up with iTunes

Strip is automatically backed up by iTunes. There is some detailed information available from Apple about iPhone backup, but the summary is that both the software program and the encrypted database are backed up during each iPhone sync.

The important thing to remember with taking backups in iTunes is that if you somehow lose data and need to restore your iPhone, you should disable automatic sync right before you plug it in to your desktop. We encourage you to have a look at our step-by-step instructions for the restore process.

Backing up with Strip on the desktop or Strip Sync

Both Strip and Strip Sync make backup copies of your encrypted database every time you sync with Strip for iOS. In addition, you can manually opt to make a backup of your database at any point by using the Backups interface on both programs.

See Also

Advisory: Safe-guard STRIP Data When Migrating to a New iPhone or Upgrading iOS

This article refers to Strip (on iOS, Windows, and OS X), not Strip Sync. See this article for information on resetting Strip Sync.

In order to reset Strip and ditch the local database, we need to delete the application’s strip.db file. In the case of iOS this means re-installing the application. Following are instructions for iOS, Windows, and OS X:

For iOS:

1. Locate the Strip icon on your device's Home screen.
2. Hold your finger down on the icon until all the icons begin to animate (they wiggle).
3. Tap the x button that appears on the icon for Strip, and confirm that you wish to remove the app from your device.
4. Launch the App Store app on your device.
5. Tap on the Updates tab, and then tap on the "Purchased" row at the top of the screen.
6. When the Purchased list loads, make sure the setting "Not on this iPhone|iPad|iPod" at the top is selected.
7. Scroll down the list to Strip, and push the cloud-button to re-install.
8. Once Strip is re-installed, launch the app and set a new master password.

For Windows:

1. If Strip is running, quit the app.
2. Open Windows Explorer (“My Computer”)
3. Enter %APPDATA%\Zetetic LLC\Strip in the Address field
4. In that folder, you’ll find a file called strip.db. Drag this to the Recycle Bin. Then start Strip again.
5. It will prompt you to enter the same Password you use on your iPhone device. Make sure you type it in exactly the same and then confirm.

For Mac OS X:

1. If Strip is running, quite the app.
2. Open Finder
3. Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Strip
4. In that folder, you’ll find a filed called default.strip (this is a file package, a wrapper around strip.db). Drag this file to the Trash (and empty it), then start Strip again.
5. It will prompt you to enter the same Password you use on your iPhone device. Make sure you type it in exactly the same and then confirm.

In Strip (and Strip Lite), all data that you enter is encrypted. Every category name, every label, every note, every pin number, which helps to prevent “ghosting” of the encrypted data. Strip uses SQLCipher, a fully-encrypted and open source embedded database, to keep your data safe. SQLCipher uses the world-class, peer-reviewed OpenSSL library.

There’s no such thing as total security, but you can get really, really close. A strong password goes a long way, but we took it a step further. Zetetic’s open source SQLCipher project, which provides secure data storage for Strip, has been enhanced to use PBKDF2 with a per-database salt to make it even more resistant to brute force and dictionary attacks.

Yes, they sure are!

Strip uses page-level encryption to ensure that your entire database is always stored securely. This database cannot be unlocked without the key — the password you use every time to run Strip. When iTunes backs up the Strip application, it simply copies the application and the supporting database file, which remains encrypted.

You can learn more about iTunes backups on Apple’s website, and we’ve also got some information here on using these backups to recover from data loss.

Strip uses our own SQLCipher library, an extension of SQLite that provides transparent, 256-bit AES encryption of database files, along with the PBKDF2 key-strengthening technique. Pages are encrypted before being written to disk and are decrypted when read back. Encryption is provided by the OpenSSL crypto library.

The source code to SQLCipher is freely available for peer-review and open-source development.

Hey, people can forget passwords, it happens, that's why we made Strip! Unfortunately, we can't unlock your database using any kind of special password or key, there are no back doors, so it’s important to set a password that’s strong (at least 8 characters), but also one that you can remember. We highly recommend using [a passphrase](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passphrase), as they tend to be harder to crack and easier for us humans to remember than random characters, but they are a little tough to enter on a mobile device. We also recommend that you take regular backups, especially if you decide to change your master password, so that you can restore your data using a previous password.

If you find that you've forgotten your master password, you'll want to try and restore from backup, and if no backup is available, you'll want to reset the app.

• Restoring from backup
• Resetting Strip
• How to backup your data

Yes! As soon as the application becomes inactive for any reason, including when the iPhone 4 puts an app to sleep in the background, the database is locked. However, if you’d like to keep the database open for a limited time while switching between apps, you can enable the autolock timer.

There sure is! Skip over here to check out the new autolock feature for iOS 4.

None of your Strip data is ever stored unencrypted in your Dropbox account.

When you use the Sync with Dropbox feature in Strip 1.6 and above, two things get stored in your Dropbox account, under a folder named "Zetetic:" 1) a temporary lock-file named sync.lock (to prevent two devices syncing at the same time during sync), and 2) strip.db, an encrypted _replica_ of your data.

We have a data import guide for Strip that explains exactly how CSV import works, with tips for customizing your import and avoiding errors. These are the main points you'll need to know:

1. The _first row_ must be the header row.
2. The header row must contain columns named Entry and Category.
3. Every row with data in your file must be a record, no extraneous info cells.
4. Each row/record must have a value in the Entry column and the Category column.

Learn more about the import process and look at a sample CSV at our data import guide.

Strip allows you to delete Categories and Entries using the swipe-to-delete paradigm common to many iPhone apps.

N.B. When you delete an Entry, all Fields below it are removed from your database. Similarly when you delete a Category, all Entries below it are removed, and so on.

To delete a Category:

1. Select the Categories tab.
2. Swipe your finger across the Category you wish to delete.
3. Tap the red Delete button that appears.

To delete an Entry:

1. Open the Category that contains the Entry you wish to delete.
2. Swipe your finger across the Entry you wish to delete.
3. Tap the red Delete button that appears.

Or:

1. Open up the the Entry you wish to delete.
2. Tap the Edit button.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the view and tap the Delete Entry button.

On Windows and OS X

There's no launching behavior yet (e.g. fields like URLs should ideally launch the URL in your web browser), although we plan to add this capability soon.

There is no auto-fill or web browser plugin capability available. We have no plans to develop such features at this time.

On iOS

Strip will automatically launch the following field types for you:

• Email addresses (launches Mail)
• Phone numbers (launches Phone)
• URL addresses (launches Safari or the registered app for the protocol)

What this means is that when you are viewing an entry with an e-mail address or a phone number, you can tap the row with the number or address and you will be prompted to leave Strip and launch the other app.

If you’d like to launch a custom application that supports a particular URL protocol (e.g. launching a terminal app for SSH connections), do the following:

1. Tap the Edit button on an Entry
2. Tap the “Add new field” label at the bottom of the fields table
3. Select URL/Website
4. Enter the URL; for TouchTerm it could look like ssh://user:password@example.com:31337

The Search field provides a text field at the top of the screen. When you enter some text and tap the Search button on the keyboard, Strip searches for all names and values that match what you’ve entered with a sub-string query (e.g. '.*query.*').

For example, if you have an Entry titled “Wall Safe” with a numeric PIN field and another Entry titled “Bank Account” that has a note with the text “Safety deposit info…”, searching for the text ‘safe’ will return both entries.

Strip Sync acts as a complete, local replica of your Strip database. Every time you sync with Strip Sync, it becomes an exact mirror of the data you have in Strip on your mobile device. In addition, Strip Sync saves a back up of its current state right before each sync, so that you have a previous copy available.

The first thing you’ll need to do is to setup Strip Sync for your desktop by reading the setup instructions and successfully syncing Strip on your iPhone (or other i-device) with Strip Sync running on your desktop.

Once you’ve got Sync working properly, you’ll want to check out the Backups tab in Strip Sync. It shows you all back ups taken so far, by Strip Sync or by you. Simply press the “Backup Now” button to make another backup of the current database, and use “Revert to Selected” to revert to any previous backup.

Strip Sync works off a file called strip.db, which stores your data in encrypted form. If you’d like to maintain your own backups of this file, you’ll need to know where to find it on your particular operating system.

For Windows Vista, and 7

The literal path for the file is:

C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Zetetic LLC\StripSync\strip.db

The easiest way to get here is probably to open your My Documents folder, and then navigate up the directory hierarchy to your AppData folder.

For Windows XP

The literal path for the file is:

C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Zetetic LLC\StripSync

You can locate your Application Data folder easily by going into My Documents and navigating up one directory.

For Mac OS X

The literal path for the file is:

/Users//Library/Application Support/Strip/strip.db

To get there in the Finder, open Finder, and select “Home” from the Go menu. Then, navigate into the Library folder in your Home directory, and follow the rest of the path above.

In Strip Sync for Mac OS X, simply select File → Export from the menu bar, or hold down Shift + Command + E and specify where you want the export file saved. This will export your entire database to CSV format.

Note: This data, once exported, will be stored in clear text, with no encryption protecting it. We suggest printing a hard copy of this data from a spreadsheet program for safe offline storage, and deleting the file itself from your computer.

Strip Sync supports importing data from CSV format. The format of your CSV file must conform to our specifications, but it’s pretty simple.

If you exported data from STRIP for Palm OS using our Palm Strip Export Utility, you should be able to import that CSV file directly into Strip Sync.

To import data from a CSV file in Strip Sync for Mac OS X, select File → Import from the menu bar (or press Command + O), and select the file containing the CSV data.

Strip Sync needs to be running and unlocked on the desktop to provide sync service to Strip. Also, both your mobile device and the computer running Strip Sync must be on the same wireless network for you to browse and find your computer*.

On your mobile device, run Strip and log in. Select the Sync tab at the bottom of the screen.

Choose your computer and make sure that Sync with Desktop is the selected option, as Overwrite Desktop and Restore from Desktop can be destructive if used unintentionally.

When ready, simply press ‘Start Sync’ and your database will be replicated.

*Note: You can specify a hostname or IP address in Strip to sync with any computer on the Internet running Strip Sync as long as you have an Internet connection available on your mobile device.

Strip Sync support Mac OS X 10.5+ and Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, and 7 (latest .NET runtime required). A Linux version is not available at this time and we have no current plans for such an implementation.

They sure are! Each backup is simply an older copy of your encrypted database, still encrypted. You can verify this yourself by attempting to open them with SQLite or SQLCipher on the command line.

Yes! We perform HMAC authentication while negotiating the connection between Strip and Strip Sync before running any sync operation to verify that the instance of Strip Sync you are connecting to is your own. We’ve also taken steps in our HMAC implementation to guard against timing attacks.

Yes, and no. The raw data communication between Strip and Strip Sync occurs over your local WiFi network with whatever encryption is in place for wireless communication. The connection between the two programs is just a simple TCP/IP connection.

No sensitive data is transmitted un-encrypted during sync, but data like operation codes are passed clear-text. Once the two programs have negotiated the sync protocol, all data passed between them is still fully encrypted.

If you find that you wish to reset Strip Sync and ditch the local database, you simply need to delete the application’s strip.db file.

For Windows:

1. Open Windows Explorer (“My Computer”)
2. Enter %APPDATA%\Zetetic LLC\StripSync in the Address field
3. In that folder, you’ll find a file called strip.db. Drag this to the Recycle Bin. Then start Strip Sync again.
4. It will prompt you to enter the same Password you use on your iPhone device. Make sure you type it in exactly the same and then confirm.

For Mac OS X:

1. Open Finder
2. Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Strip
3. In that folder, you’ll find a filed called strip.db. Drag this to the Trash. Then start Strip Sync again.
4. It will prompt you to enter the same Password you use on your iPhone device. Make sure you type it in exactly the same and then confirm.

This message, seen on Strip Sync for Windows, usually indicates that Bonjour (also known as “Zeroconf”) for Windows is not installed on your computer. As noted in the setup notes for Strip Sync for Windows, Bonjour comes with iTunes, but users who do not have iTunes installed must download the stand-alone Bonjour for Windows package from Apple.

Strip Sync provides sync service to Strip over your computer’s network connection, it does not use the dock cable or iTunes. If your computer is connected to a local WiFi network, and your iPhone (or iPad, etc) is connected to the same WiFi network, you should be able find your computer from Strip’s sync tab. Sync is initiated by Strip; simply sign in on your device and select the sync tab:

Here, tap the "Choose a Computer" button and you'll see a list of machines on your local WiFi network running Strip Sync:

If no computers are shown, check that your device has WiFi enabled in the Settings application, and that Strip Sync is running on your computer. If your computer still doesn't show up, your desktop computer may not be connected directly to the WiFi network that your device is running on (this is a common problem).

Another common problem with some home and office wireless networks is that desktop computers are often connected to separate networks, preventing the advertisement of the sync service to the wireless network. In this case your options are to change your network configuration, or to specify the hostname or IP address of your computer (this too may require you to do some network configuration). We've got some notes on this over here.

Are you seeing something like this, after waiting a really long time for the sync operation to complete?

This error is usually caused by a firewall running on your computer. If you have a firewall enabled, be sure to either make an exception for the Strip Sync application (Strip Sync for Mac OS X and Windows is a digitally signed and “trusted” application), or make an explicit exception for connections on port 57419.

We are aware that such a long time-out is not appropriate and will be cutting it much shorter in a future update to Strip.

Strip Sync is easiest to use over a local WiFi network, but for some folks this isn't an option. Strip has the ability to connect to any computer on the Internet running Strip Sync as long as that computer is reachable over the network. First, bring up the Sync tab in Strip:

Tap the "Choose a Computer" button to bring up the network browser:

Tap the Compose button at the top-right of the screen (the pen in a box), and you should see the following screen:

From here, enter the hostname or IP address and tap the Done button, and Strip will be ready to initiate sync:

Properly configuring your home or office network to allow incoming network connections from Strip to your computer over the Internet is out of the scope of this document, and can be challenging for those without a background in network technologies. If you have a network administrator or local IT support staff, you are advised to ask them for help if you run into issues.

If you’re on your own with this (at work or at home), here are some common problems you might face:

• If your computer is running a firewall, you must enable connections on port 57419.
• If your computer is behind a home router (Belkin, Linksys, etc), it likely also runs a firewall, with NAT port-forwarding. Consult your router’s documentation, and configure it to allow incoming connections on port 57419, and to forward those to your computer.

When Strip connects to Strip Sync to replicate your database, Strip Sync uses HMAC authentication to verify that the request is legitimate. For this to work, you must use the same password for Strip Sync as you do for Strip. When the password don’t match, sync attempts will fail, due to the HMAC mismatch.

Argh! This seems to be an unfortunate side-effect of the upgrade process for third party apps. The good news is that the following work-around has worked for us as well as all of the customers to whom we’ve recommended it so far. If you use Strip Sync (you should!), you can use it to restore your Strip data to the new phone directly, but all your other App Store apps also need their data restored. So, if you want to do it all at once to get back up and running, you’ll want to restore via iTunes:

1. Before connecting your device to your computer, open iTunes, go to Preferences → Devices and make sure that “Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically” is checked off.
2. Connect your new device to your computer
3. When the new iPhone appears in the sidebar, right-click it and select the Restore from Backup option.

We know, it was supposed to copy your app data, but didn’t, what gives?

Opinions differ on the matter, but the work-around described above for users migrating to a new phone applies here as well. Be sure to sync your copy of Strip to Strip Sync regularly so that you have a backup in case the iTunes restore process doesn’t work out.

It is possible that the sync process became interrupted or Dropbox was unavailable during lockfile cleanup. This should be easy to resolve as follows:

1. Open your dropbox folder on your computer
2. Locate the Zetetic Folder
3. Inside the Zetetic folder you will see a file called "sync.lock"
4. Delete sync.lock

This should resolve the problem immediately.

Currently, Strip only supports the storage of text data as described above. We think being able to store images would be really cool, but we are leery of making Strip everything to everybody. We’re not entirely opposed to the idea, but we haven’t yet become convinced that the feature should be next on our to-do list.

We’re investigating this now, but can’t commit to doing so just yet. If you’ve got to have Strip for Android, make your voice heard, get in touch, it matters!

Right now we have no plans to support WebOS, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile/Phone 7 Whatever It’s Called Now. That doesn’t mean we’re against it, we just don’t have any plans to do so right now. If you would like us to build a version of Strip for your favorite platform, please get in touch and let us know!

No, we think doing so would be a poor design choice. If things don’t look right, let us know, we’d rather just get it right and keep the application nice and simple. Version 1.4+ already contains a ton of readability improvements to the labels used in Strip, and we think that once it’s released you will find Strip even more pleasurable to use.

Updated: Jul 13, 2010.

We published the Palm Strip Export Utility for Windows and Mac OS X in Dec 2009. It allows you to create a CSV file from your old Palm Strip database files (v2.0 databases only).

See this blog post for more instructions on using the exporter utility. Those using older versions of Palm Strip should update to version 2.0 first. This utility is not for iPhone Strip databases.

All versions of Strip from 1.4.7 and on support the use of Strip Sync, which allows you to import records via CSV.

A few folks have asked us about generating random passwords that are a bit easier to remember. We’ve considered adding it to Strip before, but the point of Strip is to allow you to have really strong passwords that you don’t have to remember on your own. Using easy-to-remember passwords tends to make your passwords more susceptible to dictionary attacks. Given the security implications, we’re not convinced that it’s worth investing the development time. As always, we’re open to discussion of the matter.

Updated: Jul 13, 2010

We did: If you are running Strip v1.4.7 or greater, you can use Strip Sync on your desktop to replicate your data across multiple devices running Strip (e.g. an iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch).

Updated: Mar 1, 2011

We did! Starting in Strip version 1.5.0, if you are using iOS 4 on a device that supports multi-tasking, you now have the option of enabling a timer that keeps Strip unlock for a short time after you leave the application. To enable:

1. Log in to Strip
2. Tap on the Settings tab at the bottom of the screen
3. Tap on the Preferences row
4. Use the Timer Enabled switch control the Autolock timer
5. Tap the Lock After row to change the lockout interval

For devices without multi-tasking available, the old behavior is retained—STRIP locks as soon as the device screen is locked.