1. Before you start
You need your Kraken login and, ideally, a laptop — the key is two long strings, and copying them is easier with a real keyboard. Kraken calls the two parts the API key and the private key, and shows the private key once.
2. Make the key
Sign in at kraken.com. Open the menu behind your initials in the top right and choose Account.
Kraken's home page with the menu behind the initials in the top right open, and Account the first item in it. Choose Connections & API in the list on the left, then Create API key.
Kraken's account settings with Connections & API chosen in the list on the left. Your keys are listed under Spot trading API, beside the Create API key button. Give the key a name you will recognise later — Dashing Crypto is fine. Then tick exactly these four boxes, and nothing else:
- Funds permissions → Query — lets the app see your balances.
- Funds permissions → Deposit — lets the app show your Kraken deposit address on its Receive screen, so you can send money to your Kraken account from a wallet. It cannot withdraw.
- Orders and trades → Query closed orders & trades — your history.
- Data → Query ledger entries — deposits and withdrawals in your history.
Leave Withdraw, Create & modify orders and Cancel & close orders unticked. Those are the ones that move money, and the app will refuse a key that has them.
Leave every switch below the boxes off, including IP address restriction. A phone's address changes every time it moves between Wi-Fi and mobile data, and a key pinned to one address stops working the moment it does. A start or end date is not needed either.
Kraken's Add API key dialog, named Dashing Crypto. Query, Deposit, Query closed orders & trades and Query ledger entries are ticked, and every switch below them is off. Choose Generate key. Kraken asks you to confirm it is you once more — your passkey, or the code from your authenticator app — and then shows API key created with the API key and the private key. Copy each one whole — the private key is long and usually ends in
==. This is the only time Kraken shows them.If the dialog closes before you have copied both, they are gone: Kraken keeps neither on screen, and there is no way back to them. Make another key the same way, and delete the one you never used from the list, so it does not sit there unused.
Kraken's API key created dialog: the API key and the private key, each with a copy button, and the note that they cannot be viewed again.
3. Paste it into the app
In Dashing Crypto, open Accounts and choose Connect an exchange, then Kraken. If you already have an account, the same choice is behind the + at the top right.
Accounts, before anything is connected: the third row is Connect an exchange. Connect an exchange: Kraken is the first row. Paste the API key in the API key box and the private key in the Private key box, then tap Connect. The app checks the pair with Kraken before it saves anything, so a key in the wrong box is caught here rather than later.
Connect Kraken: the API key and private key boxes, and the note that the key only reads. Both boxes filled, and Connect lit.
That is it. Your Kraken balance appears in the same list as your wallet, and updates on its own.
4. If it does not connect
- "Did not accept this pair" — one of the two strings was cut short, or they went into each other's boxes. Paste each again, whole.
- "Cannot read that" — a permission in step 3 is missing. Edit the key on Kraken, tick it, and try again; you do not need a new key.
- Worked at home, fails elsewhere — the IP address restriction was switched on. Edit the key and switch it off.
Still stuck? Support can help with a connection. Never send anyone the private key — not us, not Kraken's support, not anyone.