Bitcoin wallet data directory
With MultiBit, you can have as many wallets as you like. They are usually given the file extension “.wallet”.
When you open MultiBit, the wallets that were open in the previous use of MultiBit are reopened. If this is the first time you have opened MultiBit a new, empty wallet file called ‘multibit.wallet’ is created in your application data directory.
Your wallets appear in the side panel labelled ‘ Wallets’. Click on one of the wallets to make it the active wallet. You can click on the small arrowhead ‘‘ (called a twisty) to see more details about the wallet. Hover over the filename to see the file path. The balance for the active wallet is shown at the top of the MultiBit screen.
Create a new wallet
To create a new wallet, click on the ‘New’ button. This opens a dialog window where you choose the location and name of the new wallet. Click ‘Ok’ and a new wallet is created with the default description ‘Your wallet description’. You can change this to something more descriptive by clicking on the text.
Open a wallet
To open another wallet, click on the ‘Open’ button. This then opens a file chooser dialog where you can choose the wallet to open. Note that MultiBit cannot open the wallet files from the Satoshi bitcoin client (wallet.dat files).
Delete a wallet
When you delete a wallet you not only delete any bitcoin in it but you will not be able to access any bitcoin that are sent to any of your wallet’s receiving addresses in the future. So we can only delete the file from the file system if that is REALLY what we want.
MultiBit wallets are currently NOT encrypted. We recommend you use TrueCrypt to protect your wallets from theft.
Troubleshooting
You can often diagnose a problem with MultiBit by looking at the Messages window by selecting the ‘View | Messages’ menu option.
For a more detailed description of what has happened with MultiBit there is a log file to look at. This is stored in the ‘log’ directory in your user data directory and is called ‘multibit.log’. Use a simple text viewer like Notepad or TextEdit to read it.
Where MultiBit stores your data
MultiBit stores user specific data such as logs and the default multibit.wallet in a “user data directory”. This directory can be worked out as follows:
- Check the the very top of the “Messages” tab for a message like “The user data directory is ‘/Users/jim/Library/Application Support/MultiBit’”
- Navigate to the MultiBit installation directory and check for a file called “multibit.properties”. If there is, use this directory as the user data directory. This is for backwards compatibility and for running everything from a USB drive.
- If none of these reveal the answer, use the technical approach given below.
Technical approach
This section is for technical users proficient with accessing environment variables. These are enclosed in “[]” such that [APPDATA] references the APPDATA environment variable.
