Sparrow Wallet is a Bitcoin wallet made for users who care about privacy, flexibility and security. It handles both single-signature and multi-signature setups, and it works with hardware wallets as well as air-gapped devices. It is still popular among advanced Bitcoin users, but many people who tried it years ago have long since forgotten where their wallet files ended up.
If you once used Sparrow Wallet and now want to recover your Bitcoins, the best way to find your wallet files is to scan your computer with an application called Treasure Hunter. You can also search for them by hand, and I will cover that method further below.
How to automatically scan your computer for Sparrow Wallet files
The most reliable way to track down a Sparrow Wallet file is to use software built for that job. Treasure Hunter inspects the contents of every file on your device to determine whether it was created by Sparrow Wallet, so it recognizes both the H2 database files and the JSON files, encrypted or not. Thanks to its advanced detection techniques, it can even uncover wallet files that were renamed, moved, hidden or partially corrupted.
Treasure Hunter runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and it can search a wide range of storage devices: hard drives (HDDs and SSDs), USB keys and SD cards, as well as optical media like CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. You can scan your devices for free.
The manual way
If you would rather not download any software, you can look for your Sparrow Wallet files yourself. Be aware, though, that a manual search is much slower and far more error-prone than an automated scan: you may walk away empty-handed from a computer that does hold a wallet, especially if the file was renamed, moved or deliberately hidden from prying eyes.
Sparrow Wallet stores its data either in a JSON file or in a H2 database file. The JSON file can be opened with any text editor and might look like the example below. Keep in mind that many JSON wallets are encrypted by Sparrow Wallet and will show up in your text editor as random characters instead.
1{
2 "name": "test",
3 "policyType": "SINGLE",
4 "scriptType": "P2WPKH",
5 "defaultPolicy": {
6 "name": "Default",
7 "miniscript": {
8 "script": "wpkh(bip39)"
9 }
10 },
11 "keystores": [
12 {
13 "label": "BIP39",
14 "source": "SW_SEED",
15 "walletModel": "SPARROW",
16 "keyDerivation": {
17 "derivationPath": "m/84'/0'/0'"
18 },
19 "seed": {
20 "type": "BIP39",
21 "mnemonicCode": [
22 "tomato",
23 "alpha",
24 "lift",
25 "humor",
26 "present",
27 "tank",
28 "brisk",
29 "logic",
30 "correct",
31 "grab",
32 "better",
33 "entry"
34 ],
35 "needsPassphrase": false,
36 "creationTimeSeconds": 1749606586001
37 }
38 }
39 ],
40 "purposeNodes": [],
41 "transactions": {},
42 "storedBlockHeight": 0
43}
Wallet files can be located almost anywhere on your computer, though the paths below are good places to start.
On Windows, you should check the following folders:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Sparrow\walletsC:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Sparrow\wallets
On Mac, you should check the folder below:
/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Sparrow/wallets
If these folders are empty or missing, search your whole computer with your operating system’s search function, and do not forget the other storage devices you may have used over the years, such as external or backup drives.
