Output Descriptors
Also: descriptors
wallets · advanced
A compact text format describing how to derive Bitcoin addresses from one or more keys — wallet-portable and explicit about its assumptions.
Output descriptors are strings like wpkh(xpub6.../0/*) that say "native segwit single-sig, derived from this xpub along the standard external chain." They were introduced in Bitcoin Core 0.17 as a successor to the older "just give me an xpub" model — they capture both the keys and the script type in one self-describing string.
The benefits are real. Two wallets that exchange descriptors can produce the exact same addresses without any out-of-band coordination about derivation paths or script types. Multisig descriptors (wsh(multi(2,xpub1.../0/*,xpub2.../0/*,xpub3.../0/*))) make backup and recovery dramatically more robust — losing the descriptor used to mean searching every plausible script type to find your coins.
Modern wallets — Sparrow, Specter, Bitcoin Core's wallet, BlueWallet — speak descriptors natively. They've quietly become the recommended way to share watch-only and multisig setups.