Articles · First steps
The wallet takes five minutes to set up, and the difficulty is not in the installation but in one step: making sure you are installing the actual Rainbow. App stores hold more fake wallets than real ones, and they work perfectly well right up to the moment you type your secret phrase into one.
14 September 2026 · verified at publication
An app in a store carries an identifier that cannot be changed. A name and an icon are easy to copy; the identifier is not, because it is built into the page address. Check it before you install and the other signs can be skipped.
| Where | Identifier | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| App Store | id1457119021 | Rainbow Studio, Inc |
| Google Play | me.rainbow | Rainbow |
| Chrome | opfgelmcmbiajamepnmloijbpoleiama | rainbow.me |
| Edge | cpojfbodiccabbabgimdeohkkpjfpbnf | rainbow.me |
| Firefox | rainbow-extension | rainbow.me |
One caveat about Firefox. Four of the identifiers in the table cannot be changed — they cannot be taken over or rewritten. The Firefox address carries rainbow-extension, which is not an identifier but a listing name: in theory another add-on could claim it if the current one were removed. So for Firefox it is especially worth checking the publisher — rainbow.me.
The most reliable route is not to search the store at all, but to open rainbow.me/download and follow the link from there. The identifier then fills itself in and there is nowhere left to slip. Type the site address by hand: a link out of a search ad can lead anywhere.
apps.apple.com/app/id1457119021. That exact number has to be in the address bar. The publisher is Rainbow Studio, Inc.
The app will ask to allow notifications and Face ID. Face ID here is not a face instead of a password — it is a lock on the key store itself. Turn it on.
If you already have a secret phrase from another wallet, choose to import. If you do not, choose to create: Rainbow generates a twelve-word phrase on the device itself, and it goes nowhere.
Not a screenshot, not a note, not a message to yourself. Those twelve words are your money: whoever knows them controls the wallet, and a transfer made that way cannot be reversed.
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.rainbow. After id= the address has to read exactly me.rainbow. Fakes usually take something close: me.rainbow.wallet, com.rainbow.me and the like.
Install, biometrics, create or import the wallet, twelve words written down on paper.
Even when the site looks official. A tampered build behaves exactly the same from the outside and differs in one thing only: a copy of your secret phrase reaches somebody else.
The extension is a separate wallet, not the same one moved onto a computer. You need it to connect to sites from a laptop. Your funds can be brought into it with the same secret phrase, but think about whether that is worth doing: a browser is a far more crowded place than a phone.
Pin the extension to the toolbar once it is installed. Unpinned, it hides away in the general list, and at the moment it is needed people click the first similar-looking thing out of habit — which is what fake extensions live on.
Settings has a backup check. Go through it right away, on an empty wallet. Finding a mistake in what you wrote six months later, when the phone has drowned, is the worst possible moment for it.
Five dollars or so. Make sure it arrives, that you can see it in the app, and that the network is the same one the sender used. Move the rest only after that.
Rainbow works with a couple of dozen networks, and a token sent to the wrong one simply will not appear in the app. Which networks are supported and how they differ is in the article on the wallet's networks and features.
Cashback and staking are not going anywhere. Learn to send and receive first, then work out the token — what it gives and what it costs we went through separately.
No. Rainbow does not hold your funds and does not open an account for you — the key is created on the device. Identity verification can come up only when you buy crypto with ordinary money through a built-in third-party provider, and that is already their requirement, not the wallet's.
Yes, by importing the same phrase. Keep in mind that this is not syncing: it is two independent ways into one and the same wallet, and losing either device means the phrase may have leaked.
Nothing happens to the money — it sits on the blockchain, not in the app. But access to it stays only with whoever holds the secret phrase. With no phrase written down, deleting the app equals losing everything.
That is not support. The real one never asks for it — not in a chat, not in a form, not for a check. The only right response is to close the conversation.
All five identifiers were verified by querying the app stores while this article was being prepared: the pages respond and the publisher matches. The full list of official resources with the dates they were checked is on the Sources page. If a store opens a different app for you at those same addresses, write to us at @RNBWwiki: something has changed and the article needs fixing.