Add watch addresses

[ghost]

Much like the "Private Keys" on the "Import/Export" tab there should be a "Watch Address" option to import public watch addresses.

The necessity for this is that I use electrum to both store and watch my wallet, and on my insecure computers I have a few vanity addresses that I would like to input into electrum without ever exposing the private keys.

Many other clients have this functionality, so I think electrum should also.

[rdymac]

If you are not a newbie you can manually add a public address in the import section of your electrum.dat

If you don't know what you are doing, don't do it. Your seed restore your deterministic addresses, but you'll lose your contacts or labels if you don't backup your current electrum.dat and break it on anyway.

I would also freeze those watch-only addresses to avoid the client trying to use them for transactions.

[ghost]

Yes this of course works, which only speaks to how easy it should be to add a button for it in the GUI. win/win

[scintill]

Thanks for the tip @rdymac. I also agree this should be added to the UI, or at least the "expert" versions.

[EagleTM]

#205 was the same issue, one suggestin there was to have a plugin for it, but i think it'd be even better to have it in the main code and be able to switch to "watching" addresses

[rdymac]

Watching addresses should be freeze by default, if not it will bring errors as I've experienced with blockchain.info wallet giving errors bc it was trying to get funds from watch-only addresses

[micheal-swiggs]

Can someone please give an example of how to edit the wallet.dat file so that I can watch some public address?

[scintill]

Here's instructions. Be careful.

1. Close Electrum.
2. Back up your wallet file.
3. Open your wallet file in a text editor such as Notepad or gedit.
4. Search for imported_keys. In a wallet without any imports, you will see 'imported_keys': {}
5. Between { and }, add an address in single quotes, followed by a colon, then two more single quotes. Between multiple addresses, insert a comma. For example, here's what it would look like having added two addresses. 'imported_keys': {'1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa': '', '12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX': ''}
6. Save the file.
7. Open Electrum. Switch to expert mode if you're not already (icon in top-right of default view.) Find the imported addresses and freeze them (right-click menu), as suggested above to avoid Electrum trying to spend from these addresses. You can also label the addresses if you'd like.

[ecdsa]

fixed in 582fb76
the install wizard can create a watching-only wallet if the user enters a list of addresses