A passkey in my vault doesn't work on my Linux machine

I use Bitwarden and have the plug-in installed on the Brave desktop browser both on my Windows machine at home and on my Linux machine at the office.

I recently created a passkey for my Google account, saved it in Bitwarden and can use it for logging in on my Windows machine just fine. However, this doesn’t work on my Linux machine.

The Bitwarden vaults of the two machines are in sync - if I examine my Google account in Bitwarden on the Linux machine, I see that it has a saved passkey, despite that I’ve saved it on my Windows machine. Still, that passkey doesn’t seem to be used - an attempt to log into Google behaves as if I don’t have a passkey.

I do understand that there two kinds of passkeys - those that can be synced and those that cannot be - but had the impression that the Google passkeys are of the first kind?

@Bontchev I don’t quite understand the question… as Bitwarden is software, a hardware-bound passkey couldn’t even be stored in the Bitwarden vault…

And as you see that passkey in your Linux, doesn’t that already mean it was synced? :wink:

Every Bitwarden app has some separate settings, that don’t get synced. Make sure, that the browser extension on your Linux machine:

  • has “checked”: Settings → Notifications → Ask to save and use passkeys
  • has Google not in that list: Settings → Notifications → Excluded domains

Well, something is stored in Bitwarden’s vault, because when I view the entry for my Google account, it has an entry for “Passkey” and a creation date. This is both on my Windows and Linux machines, so clearly this information is synced, as I said. I can’t see the actual passkey, of course - only that one is present.

This is checked on both machines.

This list is empty on both machines. If the domain is listed there, Bitwarden won’t try to submit the passkey, even if it has one saved. Instead, it would refer to the device’s own methods (biometric, etc.) for this.

Again, this is not a hardware passkey. The two vaults are in sync. Both have the passkey. But on the Linux machine, I am not offered to log in with it.

Do other passkeys stored in Bitwarden work on your Linux machine? This may be an issue with the OS.

I have a similar issue sometimes with Passkeys on my Linux machine. Try this: open the google webpage using the link in the browser extension, then wait a little bit - maybe 10-15 seconds - before trying to log in. That may help.

Yeah, that it’s due to Linux - when all other settings are correct - would also have been my next guess…

Is your Linux distro “up-to-date”?

And what browser (and version) do you use?

I use Bitwarden passkeys to login to a lot of sites with Chrome on Linux, all the time.

Including (but not limited to):

  • Google (just passwordless)
  • Bitwarden web vault (usernameless)
  • This community forums (usernameless)
  • Github (usernameless)

Edit: sorry, login to Gooogle usernameless does not work for me with bitwarden passkeys, it does with a yubikey passkey.

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I don’t know. I have created a test passkey at passkeys.io but I don’t have access to my office machine right now; it would take a few days before I could check.

Yes. Updating it is the first thing I do after logging in.

Brave (as I said in my original post), latest version (1.75.180).

Configure passkey login for the community. I have found that is one of the sites that works best with passkeys and serves as a good playground to understand how they work and to fix “system-wide” issues.

Google does have some oddness, but I am generally able to share/use its passkey between my windows devices.

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This didn’t work even on my Windows machine but while fixing this problem, the main issue managed to resolve itself too.

Turns out, the URL in Autofill options → Website was no longer valid - apparently, Google had changed something. I edited it down to just the domain part (accounts.google.com) and, after syncing, I can now log in with a passkey both from my Windows and from my Linux machine.

I don’t know for sure whether the invalid URL was the cause of the problem or whether the problem solved itself because some time had passed while I was editing the URL, so I am hesitant to mark this as a solution. Thanks for your help, though.

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That’s a good point. The URL must also be correct. - I wonder, why it worked before on your Windows machine then:

(from your first post)

(PS: So, yeah, please post again, if that wasn’t the solution and/or if it happens again.)

Anyway, glad it works for now!

Sidenote: I just changed the title from “Are Google passkeys not synced?” to “A passkey in my vault doesn’t work on my Linux machine” as it does represent the issue better.