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Save a card on your phone, then open an approval on your laptop. The laptop shows a code. Scan it with your phone, unlock the way you do for any payment, and the laptop opens your card. The laptop then offers to set up its own unlock, Face ID or Touch ID on a Mac, Windows Hello on Windows, and stops asking. Your master password keeps working everywhere it did before.

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Approve a computer from your phone

On the computer, open the approval link or your cards. Where the page cannot reach your key, it shows a square code and eight characters, and says which phone holds the key.
Point your phone’s camera at the code. Your phone opens a page that names the computer and how long ago it asked, and one button.
Tap Approve. Your phone asks for its own unlock, Face ID or Touch ID on an iPhone, fingerprint or face unlock on an Android phone, or your master password where that is how the phone opens the vault. The computer unlocks within a few seconds. If the computer was signed out when it asked, your phone shows six digits after you approve. Type them on the computer to finish. The digits are what stop a code someone sent you from signing their computer in: only a person looking at your phone’s screen has them.

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Compare the code instead of scanning

If the computer is signed in, its request also appears on your phone’s own vault page, with no camera needed. Open your cards on the phone, choose the request, and check that the eight characters your phone shows match the eight on the computer before you approve. If they do not match, do not approve: the request is not the one on your screen.

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Turn on this computer’s unlock

Right after the computer opens your card, it offers to use its own Face ID, Touch ID or Windows Hello next time. Accept, and your next visit is a look, not a code. Decline, and nothing changes; the offer comes back after your next unlock.

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Know what a code cannot do

A code expires ten minutes after the computer asks. A request you did not make can be ignored; it approves nothing on its own. Approving a computer lets it open your cards; it does not let it change any autopilot spending rules, which you allow separately, per device, from a device that already can.

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Let a computer change spending rules

A computer you approved opens your cards. Changing autopilot’s spending rules is a second thing you allow, per computer, from a device that already can: open your cards there, choose Your devices, and allow the computer. Until then the computer sees your rules and changes nothing, and its autopilot panel says so.
Autopilot turns on only once your account has a master password, because that is the one way to open your cards if you lose the device that holds them. The panel asks for one first if you have none.

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Remove a computer

Open your cards on any device that opens them, choose Your devices, and remove the one you no longer hold. It cannot open your cards after that, and anything it was signed in to is signed out on its next request. Spending rules that computer already approved keep running until they expire, because a rule belongs to the account and not to the computer that approved it. The screen names each one, with its card, what is left of its budget and when it ends. From a device that manages your spending rules you can turn them all off as you remove the computer; from any other device the screen says where to do that.

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If you lose the phone that holds your key

Sign in on any device with the code sent to your email. Because your key is on a device you no longer hold, your master password does not work there straight away: the screen says so and offers a wait. Start it, and a day later the password works on that device. A device you approve from a phone that still opens your cards skips the wait.
You get a notice when the wait starts, naming the device, and another when it ends. If the sign-in was not you, the first notice’s stop link ends the wait, and the password stays off that device. Nothing else changes; from a device that opens your cards, choose Your devices and remove any you do not recognise. Once the wait ends, that device offers to turn on its own unlock, as an approved computer does. Accounts with no passkey are never made to wait: their master password is the only key, and it works everywhere at once.