Can you view the Private Keys of your Ledger Wallet?

No, you cannot view or export your Ledger wallet’s 12-24 word backup — regardless if it’s a Ledger Nano S, Nano S Plus, Nano X, or the newer Ledger Stax.

Ledger hardware wallets are designed to keep your private keys secure by storing them in the hardware wallet itself — in its secure element(Ledger’s highly advanced chip), which is isolated from the internet, your device, and other potential security threats.

The wallet creation process

The only time your Ledger wallet is going to show you your private keys — though the 12-24 word backup, is through the wallet generation process. After this process, your Ledger will never display your 12-24 word backup again.

This is why Ledger(and other hardware wallets) give huge emphasis on writing down your wallet’s backup before proceeding.

Lost access to your wallet backup?

The only thing you can do is move all your crypto assets to a temporary software wallet and generate a new wallet with a new set of recovery phrase and passphrase using your Ledger hardware wallet.

If you want to be totally sure though and if you’re not comfortable with moving all your crypto assets to a software wallet because of security reasons:

1. purchase a new Ledger hardware wallet (always buy from the official website!)
2. generate a new wallet using the new hardware wallet
3. send over the funds from the old hardware wallet to the new hardware wallet

That way, you wouldn’t need to expose your crypto assets to a potentially malware-infected mobile/desktop device.

“But I don’t want to own two hardware wallets”

You can keep the second hardware wallet as a backup, in case the other unexpectedly breaks or gets lost.