How strong is your sign?

The pattern strength meter lets you draw a sign on a 5×5 dot grid and see how hard it would be to guess. It looks at length, turns, and the shapes people commonly pick, and gives you an estimate with suggestions. It runs entirely in your browser: nothing you draw is sent anywhere or stored.

Why test a pattern at all

Patterns feel secure because they are visual and personal. In practice, people choose them in predictable ways: starting in the top-left corner, drawing letters such as L, Z, M, or N, tracing the edges, or picking short, symmetric shapes. Anyone guessing will try those first.

On the classic 3×3 grid used by many Android phones, there are relatively few possible patterns, and real-world choices cluster in a small fraction of them. A 5×5 grid has 25 dots instead of 9, which allows far more possible signs — but only if you actually use that space.

How to use it

1. Draw a sign on the grid above, the same way you would in an app.
2. Read the score and the notes underneath.
3. Clear and try variations: longer, more turns, different starting point.

How to read the results

The meter estimates how many guesses an attacker would need, using what is known about how people choose patterns. Roughly:

• Weak: short signs, straight lines, letters, digits, or common shapes. These fall to the first guesses.
• Fair: longer signs that still follow a recognizable shape or start from a corner.
• Strong: many dots, several direction changes including diagonals, no recognizable shape.

The notes explain what pulls your score down — for example "starts in a corner" or "looks like a letter" — so you know what to change.

Keep in mind what a meter cannot measure: whether someone has watched you draw it. Shoulder surfing and smudge trails on the screen beat any score. Draw out of sight.

Why longer is not automatically stronger

A sign that touches all 25 dots in neat rows is long but completely predictable: it is a zigzag, one of the first shapes anyone would try. Likewise, a spiral from the outside in, or a border traced around the grid, looks complex but follows a rule. What matters is not the number of dots alone but how many reasonable alternatives a guesser has at each step. Turns that break a pattern, diagonal moves, and a start point away from corners all multiply those alternatives.

The opposite also holds: a sign does not need to be enormous. A sign of eight to twelve dots with irregular turns is both memorable and hard to guess, and it is fast to draw every day.

Memorability without predictability

The best signs are easy for you to remember for a reason nobody else knows. A few approaches that tend to work:

• Trace a shape that matters only to you, then deliberately add one or two breaks in it.
• Start from an interior dot rather than a corner.
• Combine two small shapes in different parts of the grid, joined by a diagonal.

Draw it a few times on the meter, see where it lands, and adjust. If it reads as a letter or a common shape, change it.

How this applies to sigil.

In sigil., your sign is not a screen lock — it is the source of your encryption key. It is run through Argon2id, which makes every guess slow, and tied to your phone's secure chip, so nobody can even try to guess it away from your device; in the app, wrong signs trigger growing waits, and you can turn on self-destruct after too many attempts. But a weak sign is still a weak secret. That is why we built this meter. See pattern encryption for the full explanation.

A few practical rules:

• Touch at least eight dots.
• Change direction several times; include diagonals.
• Avoid letters, initials, numbers, and symmetric shapes.
• Do not reuse the same sign across multiple hidden vaults.
• Keep your recovery phrase offline in case you forget it.

Patterns, PINs, and passwords on iPhone

iPhone does not offer a pattern lock for the device. Natively you choose between a 4-digit code, a 6-digit code, a custom numeric code, or a custom alphanumeric passcode, under Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Change Passcode > Passcode Options. A longer alphanumeric passcode is the strongest of these.

Which is better for what? Our guide pattern lock vs PIN vs password compares them honestly. To test a password or passphrase instead of a sign, use the password strength checker.