Bark Wallet hit the Umbrel app store on the same day as our mainnet launch. A number of adventurous users have already installed it and started making payments, and with everything running smoothly, it's time for a proper introduction.

Bark Wallet is built in-house, leveraging our knowledge of the Ark protocol and the Bark API. While you won't find a deep catalogue of power-user settings or fancy extras, you will find a simple, dependable bitcoin wallet that covers the complete Bark experience: sending and receiving over Ark, Lightning, and on-chain, refreshes automated in the background, and the all-important emergency exit in case you want your sats back on-chain without anyone's permission.

Bark Wallet listed on the Umbrel App Store

Keeping things simple

Bark makes Lightning insanely simple. There are no channels to open and no liquidity to manage. Send yourself a Lightning payment to top up (or get someone else to!), and you can immediately start paying out to all of bitcoin's major payment networks. Fees are low and payments deliver fast and reliably. Everything a bitcoin wallet should do.

Bark Wallet's send modal

On the send side, Bark Wallet accepts practically anything you point it at: Ark addresses, on-chain addresses, BOLT11 invoices, BOLT12 offers, Lightning addresses, and BIP321 URIs. We have Branta address verification too, for that extra confidence your bitcoin sends will end up with the right person.

Branta address verification and Byte in his Sunday best

On the receive side, QR codes are combined BIP321 codes that encode the on-chain, Lightning, and Ark payment details together, so anyone sending you sats doesn't need to think about it, their app simply picks the cheapest option available. No Lightning address and BOLT12 yet, but we have some ideas for those!

Bark Wallet's receive modal with combined QR code

From proof-of-concept to Umbrel app

Bark Wallet started life as bark-web, a fun project by Carlos Marques, one of the engineers on our team, as a demonstration of how someone might build a web wallet on Bark (you might have seen him tweeting about it).

As the project took shape, we realized it would make a great front end for barkd, our wallet daemon, with very little wiring. For anyone running a server, barkd is the alternative to building an app from scratch with the Bark SDK. Instead, simple install a Docker container and you get a fully fledged Ark wallet, with Lightning payments and a BDK-powered on-chain wallet built in, all controlled through an developer-friendly REST API.

By packaging the two together, regular users could control barkd through a web interface—the perfect fit for always-online platforms like Umbrel.

So we polished up the proof-of-concept, learning a lot about the developer experience of our own platform and improving it as we went. The Umbrel team were also extremely generous with their time and support in helping us get the app ready and listed on the app store on short notice. Top bitcoiners, thank you.

A starting point for your next wallet project

Bark Wallet is open source on GitLab. If you're thinking of building on barkd, it's a working reference for how our own team would approach a wallet app, UX decisions included. And it's MIT licensed, so you're welcome to fork it. All the basic functionality is already in place, so it should make a great base for the vibe coders out there!

bark-web is open-source on GitLab

One-click install and go

If you run an Umbrel, install Bark Wallet from the app store. Top up with Lightning, send some sats to friends, and if you want peace of mind, test an emergency exit and flex the wallet's self-custody.

If you don't have an Umbrel, there are still options to get started with Bark. Noah and Arké, two mobile Bark-based wallets, offer solutions for iOS and Android.

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