Add essential keyboard shortcuts & navigation

Feature Requests Password Manager
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133

I created Keyboard Shortcut for copying notes · Issue #921 · bitwarden/browser · GitHub but the developer closed. This isn’t an exact fit with the request in this topic, but one of the reasons this critical feature (adequate keyboard shortcuts) has been left undeveloped for so many years is because unlike Github issues, forum feature requests are pretty invisible and ineffective in driving development.

"[forum requests have] no link with the actual product development in terms of commits\PRs. Hence there are no real progress updates in this Feature Request. It can be open forever without any status changes and feedback to users. Github issues can go stale after inactivity. Feature requests in a forum do not. Too many GitHub issues that go stale look bad reputationally for the project and encourage regular updates.

IMO, should be both. As now, users should request features in this forum using their language (not always precise enough), then devs\admins create one or more associated GitHub issues with the necessary precision and post links to these in the forum Feature Request. Creation of a GitHub issue shows that the devs do actually give a sh!t and intend to do something about it. Other FOSS projects, work well with this setup.

It’s not enough for project leadership to promise they’ll keep an eye on a forum. Meaningful feedback via GitHub issues is also necessary. They serve different purposes and types of people, but both are needed."

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Hi @bitmatron and thanks for the feedback! Currently we only use Github to track issues, but we do review the forums daily, including the Feature Requests category. There are a LOT of great ideas here, and the public roadmap is the way that we communicate our high level goals for the year.

You’ll see a few of us on here responding directly to feedback. We also just introduced a roadmap:planned tag to the forums that we will start using to flag feature requests that are set to be included in a future release. Keyboard shortcuts and accessibility improvements is definitely on our radar :slight_smile:

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@bw-admin Thanks for the info about the current approach to the roadmap and how the team tracks feature requests. I see that keyboard shortcuts are not mentioned at all on the 2022 roadmap which you linked to.

Apologies in advance if what I’m about to write gets a bit ranty, but please rest assured it comes with love from a huge Bitwarden fan and Premium member who only wants the very best success for the project. So this feedback is intended purely as constructive criticism to help the team connect better with community needs.

With respect, and IMHO, saying “Keyboard shortcuts and accessibility improvements is definitely on our radar” seems to miss the mark by quite a wide margin. If the feature’s nowhere to be seen on the roadmap, saying it’s “on our radar” comes across as basically saying “we know people want it, but we have no intention to do anything about it any time soon”. That’s almost worse than not saying anything at all, and certainly worse than just saying “sorry, we know people want it, but we’re not planning to do anything about it because of reasons X, Y, and Z”. In the latter case you could at least add something like “… but if someone submits a PR to improve this, we’ll consider reviewing and maybe merging it, and first take a look at these currently open PRs since they might serve as a good starting point”.

The community has been clamouring for better shortcuts since 2018. That’s FOUR YEARS, during which time I’m afraid the community has been ignored or fobbed off on numerous occasions.

Now, if adding more keyboard shortcuts was some hugely complex and difficult task which required months of development, I would have some sympathy with the delay. I’ve been a professional developer for around 30 years and I know how hard it can be to deliver everything that everyone asks for in a timely fashion.

But we are talking about very simple improvements here. Any decent developer should be able to make substantial progress in this in under a week, quite possibly less. And this is currently one of the top 20 most highly voted feature requests. So isn’t it time, after 4 years of requests, to take this a little more seriously and prioritise it?

If I wasn’t so damn busy at the moment I would offer to work on it myself. But I see that contributors have already made several attempts to improve the status quo, and they’ve all stalled:

So it seems that maybe the environment for contributions could be made a little more conducive to success. And even if a contributor vanishes before the PR gets merged, the team could still take over development and see it through to completion.

Thanks for listening!

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136

Hey @aspiers, thanks for the thoughtful response and I completely understand! We’re currently hiring for a Product Manager, Platform and Community to improve our processes, just as you suggested, so look forward to that!

In the meantime, I’ll take your feedback to heart and I’ve mentioned in several other threads recently that users can use the Github Contributions area to submit proposals, so I’ll be sure to reference that option whenever possible.

I’ll also review the links you provided with the team, so thanks for sharing. I’m also personally very passionate about accessibility, so I’ll be sure to share any news that the team has to share!

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137

Thanks for the info above, folks!

This has me wondering if maybe I should run my own chrome extension based off of Keyboard up/down arrow navigation by respawned86 · Pull Request #1962 · bitwarden/browser · GitHub - seems like it’d provide the best starting point to add an “enter” launch shortcut as well.

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Thank you so much @bw-admin for the quick and considerate response, and great to hear you’re hiring for that role - I’m sure it will help a lot when it’s filled! Good to learn about the GitHub Contributions area too - sorry I haven’t had time to pay close enough attention to the various threads to notice that before.

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139

It would be really cool if you could try both that and Keyboard shortcut to copy password by respawned86 · Pull Request #1961 · bitwarden/browser · GitHub and see how they compare!

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Thanks! I tried the up/down today but had to update it first Updated: Keyboard arrow navigation by matschaffer · Pull Request #2492 · bitwarden/browser · GitHub

Both PRs are quite old so definitely some work to be done to bring them up to date.

Also I only got it working once. I suspect this is just something I’m not understanding about the extension refresh workflow though.

Neither answer my personal ask though which is a “launch” hotkey. Up/down will help in the case of multiple hits here though.

Maybe 1Password has warped my brain here but I like that once a site is in my password manager I don’t need to bookmark it anymore. I can just search & launch from the manager.

It’s the thing I miss most having made the switch from 1Password 6 to Bitwarden.

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Also incase it helps anyone I discovered these context menus that the extension also adds.

They’re not keyboard-driven of course, but I wish I’d noticed them earlier.

It at least avoids the needs to flip between the keyboard & mouse to get logged in to something. I can just mouse my whole way to an autofill or copy password.

Screen Shot 2022-04-05 at 16.40.24
Screen Shot 2022-04-05 at 16.40.24848×266 50.6 KB

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Figured I should follow up here that the up/down PR as well as my updated version are now closed.

The functionality is seems desirable but the approach in that PR was not (by both me and the maintainer).

So either someone will have to propose an updated PR before we can get that functionality.

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Thanks @matschaffer! If anyone would like to work on a PR, you can also create a new post in the Github Contributors category for collaboration.

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We really want the keyboard arrow keys and shortcuts to improve… pls work on it in the future updates.

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145

Feature name

Add hotkey Ctrl+S to save info

Feature function

Add ability to save newly created entries by clicking Ctrl+S hotkey. It will help to avoid clicking on “Save” button and make it faster and more comfortable.

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One shortcut that would be very useful to add to the Desktop application is a global shortcut that would bring the Bitwarden application to the front so it has the focus.

Basically I want a shortcut that does the opposite of the below. Restore the window, move it to the top, and give it focus.

    • Ctrl/CMD + M → Minimize
    • Ctrl/CMD + Shift + M → Send to tray/Hide to Menu bar
147

I’m coming from RoboForm and this is a huge usability thing for me. If I were using my mouse to find the login I want to use, then also needing to click on it with my mouse would be fine or perfect, even, but that is not how I use the browser extension. Instead, I activate/open it with a shortcut I configured in Chrome (ctrl + b), then start typing to find the login (the search field is focused immediately when I activate, so that’s great!), but then I need to use my moue to do anything else with the login. Navigating to it with the keyboard would flow nicely.

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148

Feature name

  • Open edit item form with keyboard shortcut. For macOS it may be Cmd + E.

Feature function

  • Opens edit item form
  • Easier and faster modification of specific item

Related topics + references

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I’m currently trying to remediate my LastPass exposure.

Each time I save a credential, the list view refreshes and returns me to the start of the list.

The saved item is still highlighted, but pressing up/down doesn’t move onto the next record. This is a real pain.

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The ability to edit an item on the desktop app, using the keyboard shortcut Cmd + E, is a big one for me. Hopefully shortcuts are available in the near future. :crossed_fingers:

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151

I’d be really happy just to have arrow key navigation, when I want to quickly flip through multiple entries. Having the arrow keys scroll the view instead of selecting items is practically useless.

Building on top of that, being able to see more than just the site name + username without focusing each entry (e.g. showing a custom field) would be a huge improvement too.

As it stands right now, the most efficient way for me to do some things I want to do is… sigh… export my vault to JSON.

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Do you know if there is any way to centrally manage these via GPO?