Menu action to export a watchonly wallet #872

achow101 commented at 11:31 PM on May 13, 2025: member

Allows a user to export a watchonly version of their wallet to be used in an airgapped setup.

Built on https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/32489

DrahtBot commented at 11:31 PM on May 13, 2025: contributor

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Conflicts

Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:

#bitcoin/bitcoin/35043 (refactor: Properly return from ThreadSafeQuestion signal + btcsignals follow-ups by maflcko)
#bitcoin/bitcoin/34681 (wallet: refactor ScanForWalletTransactions by Eunovo)
#bitcoin/bitcoin/34400 (wallet: parallel fast rescan (approx 5x speed up with 8 threads) by Eunovo)
#bitcoin/bitcoin/32895 (wallet: Prepare for future upgrades by recording versions of last client to open and decrypt by achow101)
#bitcoin/bitcoin/32861 (Have createwalletdescriptor auto-detect an unused(KEY) by Sjors)
#bitcoin/bitcoin/32857 (wallet: allow skipping script paths by Sjors)
#bitcoin/bitcoin/32784 (wallet: derivehdkey RPC to get xpub at arbitrary path by Sjors)
#bitcoin/bitcoin/29136 (wallet: addhdkey RPC to add just keys to wallets via new unused(KEY) descriptor by achow101)

If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.

DrahtBot added the label CI failed on May 14, 2025

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on May 16, 2025

achow101 force-pushed on May 16, 2025

DrahtBot removed the label Needs rebase on May 16, 2025

DrahtBot removed the label CI failed on May 17, 2025

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on May 19, 2025

achow101 force-pushed on May 20, 2025

DrahtBot removed the label Needs rebase on May 20, 2025

hebasto renamed this:
~~gui: Menu action to export a watchonly wallet~~
Menu action to export a watchonly wallet
on May 20, 2025

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on May 21, 2025

achow101 force-pushed on May 21, 2025

DrahtBot removed the label Needs rebase on May 21, 2025

DrahtBot added the label CI failed on May 21, 2025

achow101 force-pushed on Jun 2, 2025

DrahtBot removed the label CI failed on Jun 2, 2025

achow101 force-pushed on Jun 4, 2025

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on Jul 1, 2025

achow101 force-pushed on Sep 11, 2025

DrahtBot removed the label Needs rebase on Sep 11, 2025

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on Dec 17, 2025

descriptor: Add CanSelfExpand()

CanSelfExpand() reports whether a descriptor can be expanded without
needing any caches or private keys to be provided by the caller of
Expand().

2f496d038e

wallet: Use Descriptor::CanSelfExpand() in CanGetAddresses()

If a descriptor does not need any caches or private keys in order to
expand, then CanGetAddresses() should return true for that descriptor.

056a35feb0

wallet: Write new descriptor's cache in AddWalletDescriptor

If a new WalletDescriptor is provided to us with a cache, write the
cache to disk as well.

b3ba2420e5

wallet: Move listdescriptors retrieving from RPC to CWallet

When listdescriptors retrieves the descriptors from the wallet, instead
of having this logic in the RPC, move it into CWallet itself. This
will enable other functions to get the descriptors in an exportable
form.

e01da1cee2

wallet: Add CWallet::ExportWatchOnly

ExportWatchOnly produces a watchonly wallet file from a CWallet. This
can be restored onto another instance of Bitcoin Core to allow that
instance to watch the same descriptors, and also have all of the same
initial address book and transactions.

f41cbe8f4e

wallet, rpc: Add exportwatchonlywallet RPC 86e2b1ae3c

test: Test for exportwatchonlywallet 764d0218dd

doc: update offline-signing-tutorial to use exportwatchonlywallet rpc fc85c444e8

achow101 force-pushed on Apr 28, 2026

DrahtBot removed the label Needs rebase on Apr 28, 2026

DrahtBot added the label CI failed on Apr 28, 2026

DrahtBot commented at 8:12 PM on April 28, 2026: contributor

🚧 At least one of the CI tasks failed. <sub>Task tidy: https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gui/actions/runs/25068575825/job/73442374300</sub> <sub>LLM reason (✨ experimental): CI failed because clang-tidy reported an bugprone-unused-return-value warning in qt/bitcoingui.cpp (neglecting a returned value), which was treated as an error.</sub>

<details><summary>Hints</summary>

Try to run the tests locally, according to the documentation. However, a CI failure may still happen due to a number of reasons, for example:

Possibly due to a silent merge conflict (the changes in this pull request being incompatible with the current code in the target branch). If so, make sure to rebase on the latest commit of the target branch.
A sanitizer issue, which can only be found by compiling with the sanitizer and running the affected test.
An intermittent issue.

Leave a comment here, if you need help tracking down a confusing failure.

</details>

gui: Menu action for exporting a watchonly wallet 66824c5a10

achow101 force-pushed on Apr 29, 2026

DrahtBot removed the label CI failed on Apr 29, 2026

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on May 14, 2026

DrahtBot commented at 10:47 AM on May 14, 2026: contributor

🐙 This pull request conflicts with the target branch and needs rebase.