Why does it say “Safety pause”?

You got back into your account with a link we emailed you, so for a while the new passkey cannot do a few things that cannot be undone. Only your mailbox proved it was you, and if someone else had got into your email and done this, the pause gives you time to notice and remove their passkey before it can remove yours, delete your account or change your family

The message looks like this. It names whatever you tried, and how much of the wait is left:

"Safety pause 🛡️ You signed in with a passkey added from a recovery link, so removing a passkey is paused for another 23 hours and 5 minutes. Sign in with the original passkey, or come back then"

It is not a fault, nothing is wrong with your account, and it ends on its own. Support cannot switch it off for you

What is paused, and for how long

The wait counts from when you added the new passkey, not from when you see the message: a passkey added at 9 in the morning can remove another passkey from 9 the next morning. The message says how much of the wait is left, in hours and minutes, such as "another 23 hours and 5 minutes" or "another 1 hour and 20 minutes", and in minutes in the last hour. It rounds up to the minute, so that you never come back too early

Everything else works as usual, including signing in, renaming a passkey, adding another one, and inviting people to your family

"Needs a fresh sign-in first"

Now and then the message asks you to sign in again instead, for example "Safety pause 🛡️ Removing a passkey needs a fresh sign-in first. Sign out, then sign in with your passkey and try again". It means the page couldn't tell which passkey you signed in with, so it couldn't tell whether the pause applies. Sign out with the arrow at the top right of your dashboard, sign in again, and try once more. If the pause applies to the passkey you sign in with, you then get the usual message, with the time that is left

What “the original passkey” means

It means any passkey you had before you used the emailed link: one on your old phone, on another computer, or on a security key. Signing in with one of those proves more than your mailbox does, so nothing is paused for that sign-in

To switch, sign out with the arrow at the top right of your dashboard (it says Logout when you point at it), then sign in on the device that holds your older passkey

If you lost it, which is probably why you used the link, waiting is the only way. There is nothing you need to do: when the wait is over, the same buttons simply work

Things worth knowing

• The message stays on the screen until you close it, so you can read the wait properly. Close it with the small close button on the message. It shows on top of everything else, so if you pressed a button in a question such as "Remove this passkey?", you can read it without closing the question
• A passkey you add during the pause gets a pause of its own. If you add another passkey while you are signed in with the new one, it is treated the same way: its own 24 hours, and 2 hours for billing, start when you add it
• A family invitation can run out during the pause. An emailed invitation works for 24 hours, so one that arrives now may have expired by the time joining works again. When the pause is over, ask whoever invited you for a fresh one, or join with the family's name and invite code. See Join a family
• In the first 2 hours, the billing message can appear as soon as your dashboard opens, because your Plan card cannot load until then. Pressing Manage Plan during those 2 hours shows it again. Once they are up, press Manage Plan again, or refresh the page, and your plan loads as usual

If someone else used the link

You would know from the email A passkey was added to your vauz.sealzi.com account. If it says "It was added using a recovery link sent to this email address" and that was not you, someone has read your mailbox and added a passkey of their own. The pause is there so that you can act first: for 24 hours their passkey cannot remove yours or delete your account

If you only got Get back into your vauz.sealzi.com account and nothing else, most likely someone just typed your address. As that email says, you can ignore it, and your passkeys keep working. To be sure, sign in and check that every passkey on your Passkeys card is yours. For more on telling our real emails apart, see Is this email really from Vauz?