Accessible on phone but not on PC

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21

Thank you!

The screenshot shows (at least three important things):

  1. You indeed set up “authenticator app” (TOTP) 2FA for your Bitwarden account.

  2. You don’t have any other 2FA method enabled, otherwise you would see a “Select another method” button.

  3. You could use your 2FA recovery code now to disable 2FA for your Bitwarden account/vault.

Hm, and to be honest – your screenshot confirms my initial assumption. So, indeed you can go back to my post #4 (and maybe posts #5, #6 and #7). Read everything very carefully there (maybe again), as your situation is “serious” now. (though I think you can ignore some questions we posted there, as your situation is clear now – I think the main part you have to follow now is in post #4… posts 5-7 only give some additional information for you)

Once again I would like to emphasize to make sure, that the export you made was unencrypted (JSON) (because of the current bug with password-protected exports on the mobile apps, those password-protected exports are invalid at the moment). You’ll need it for your new Bitwarden account (and to not loose your data right now!).

If you have any questions regarding posts 4-7, please come back at any time.

22

Alright, thank you very much Nail1684 for all the efforts for helping me out. I have exported, unencrypted. So what should I do next? To create a new account for my Web access? In that case, what should I do to synchronize with my phone account? I am not sure what “TOTP seed code” is, should I get one in someway for that I would not repeat the kind of dilemma I am facing now? Not urgent, but when you folks have time, pls let me know how i should proceed from here. Tks a lot again!

23

Very good! And I hope it’s a JSON file (as the CSV doesn’t contain certain things like identities, cards and passkeys).

You have to understand one thing: the “phone account” and the “web account” are one same account. Not only your web account is inaccessible now. If you would log out on your phone – and the 30 day “remember me” for your 2FA expires there – then you also won’t be able to log in on your phone any longer.

Usually you only have one BW account, but that one BW account can be accessed from many places – like your phone, your desktop browser, another device like a tablet or laptop etc.

(of course, people could set up multiple BW accounts – but that’s a special setup if you had a usecase for that, like one work and one personal account… and BTW, only one free BW account would be allowed per person)

So, you would have to (most important steps now)…

  1. create a new BW account now

  2. immediately create an emergency sheet for it (with at least the email address, BW server region – US/.com or EU/.eu – and master password on it)

  3. set up 2FA again for your new account

  4. add the 2FA recovery code to your emergency sheet! – and if you’re using “authenticator app” (TOTP) as 2FA again, you should also store the “authenticator key” / TOTP seed code (I’ll try to add something to that below)

  5. check if you can log out and log in to your BW account without any issues (e.g. on the web vault)

  6. import your unencrypted JSON export to your new account (in the web vault or any other app can do that as well now, I think)

  7. when you made sure all your data is in your new BW account, you can log out on the phone and log in to your new BW account

  8. finally, you can consider deleting your old account (I personally would wait a few days and see if everything is working with the new account)

PS: Additionally and for the future a reminder again: Try to also make regular (or at least casual) exports/backups of your vault.

Addition: When you set up “authenticator app” (TOTP) 2FA for your Bitwarden account, at the moment, you’ll see a screen like this (the screenshot is from a BW test account I use for the forum and the actual data is invalid/not in use, therefore I don’t redact it):

2025-12-26--04-14-12-vivaldi_4ebdzcPiYd
2025-12-26--04-14-12-vivaldi_4ebdzcPiYd935×773 81 KB

You can add the TOTP seed code (or as BW calls it in their apps: “authenticator key”) to your emergency sheet. And you could even store the QR code, like per screenshot and maybe even print it… but make sure, that image file is not stored in unsecure locations.

Anyway, if you either have the TOTP seed code or the QR code with your emergency sheet, you could always set what you described as “link” up again with every newly installed authenticator app, if you ever lost your authenticator app (again).

[And short explanation, if interested: the TOTP seed code, is the underlying code, that in combination with the current time, computes and produces the mostly 6-digit verification codes. – Every TOTP verification code has such an underlying “seed code” – and those QR codes mainly contain the TOTP seed code – but it’s more easy to scan the QR code than to type in the seed code manually, but both things are possible in all authenticator apps.

The loss of the TOTP seed code for your BW account was what your issue initially “evoked” here…]

24

One thing that is important for you to understand, is that there is only a single Bitwarden account. The data stored on Bitwarden’s cloud servers under your account is synchronized with apps running on your phone and computer. You currently are unable to log in to your old Bitwarden account, because you have lost access to the second login factor. Even though you can still see a local copy of your vault data that exists on your phone (because the app happens to still be logged into and synchronized with your account), there is nothing to prevent your phone app from becoming logged out, in which case you will permanently lose access to your old Bitwarden account and everything stored there.

To put it more succinctly, it is likely only a matter of time before you lose access to your Bitwarden vault data on your phone.

25

Thank you very much for the clear instructions and illumination on the ins and outs of the app. When creating the new account, should I use the same email account or I have to use a different one? I used to avoid saving anything critical outside a secure place like Bitwarden, so maybe I should save my “emergency sheet” info in my wife’s Bitwarden account.

26

When you create a new BW account, you have to use a new email address now, as the current email address is associated with your current account.

When you will have deleted your “old” BW account, then your current email address would be “free” to be used again. Then you could change the email address you use for Bitwarden. (https://bitwarden.com/help/product-faqs/#q-how-do-i-change-my-email-address)

In that context another “lesson”: before any critical action in the BW web vault (like changing your email address or master password etc.), always make an export of your vault first. Just in case.

For your emergency sheet: you could consider storing it also in your wife’s BW account. But you should also consider the possibility (or “worst case scenario”), that both you and your wife can’t access Bitwarden - and your emergency sheets should also be available in such a case that no one of you can access their BW account. (in fact, the emergency sheets are “a thing” because they are supposed to help in that exact case)

BTW, the BW account of your wife should also have it’s own emergency sheet(s). → Especially if you never stored your wife’s 2FA recovery code, don’t forget to store that on her emergency sheet(s), besides the other things I mentioned in the instructions above.

27

You could save a copy of the information there, but to avoid defeating the purpose of the Emergency Sheet (which is to prevent you from losing access to your Bitwarden vault data), you must keep one (or preferably more than one) copy stored in a location where it can be accessed without a password (e.g., outside any password manager). It is recommended for the Emergency Sheet to be stored on a physically tangible (non-digital) medium, such as paper; store the emergency sheet in a secure location (e.g., with your other important paper documents, such as passports and birth certificates).

If this makes you nervous, there are some strategies available for increasing the security of the Emergency Sheets.

28

Thank you very much to both of you. I shall do as you have instructed.

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