Android says "No passkeys available" invalidly

Ask the Community Password Manager
, ,
1

I filed this bug, but it feels like I’m not going to get any more answers.

  1. Bitwarden is the only passkey provider enabled.
  2. I have a video of the Passkey working.
  3. I have screenshots of the enroll passkeys.
  4. I have a screenshot showing Bitwarden is the only passkey provider.
  5. I have screenshots of Google Password Manager having NO accounts/passkeys.
  6. I have a video of the Passkey working, via Bitwarden.

As the bug says SPORADICALLY Android will incorrectly report that there are no passkeys available.

I am concerned this is actually an Android bug, rather than Bitwarden.

What do I do now?

3

Shout-out to the user that saw it through to … a conclusion with me :slight_smile: .

I’m not sure what to take away. I guess it’s either:

  1. Google Password Manager being weird, while doing its mediation
  2. somehow a vaultwarden thing (I assumed passkeys would be cached locally)
  3. some really odd bitwarden bug

Appreciate the help; sad at the conclusion(s).

Would be curious if anyone else has thoughts, or has seen this.

4

Were you able to reproduce the issue using your test account on bitwarden.com?

5

Hi @grb,

I have not been able to reproduce on either account (bitwarden.com, or self-hosted Vaultwarden) in the last hour or so. I have inquired in the Vaultwarden Matrix room - if they have any ideas, if they know if server interaction is utilized when using a passkey, any hints really.

Like I said though, this whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth regarding Google Password Manager. As shown in that GitHub thread, the UX is /very/ confusing, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s more of a bug in the GPM mediation logic, rather than in the Bitwarden Android client…

Or maybe it’s Vaultwarden, I don’t know. Hopefully the next repro will give some more clues … :upside_down_face: .

1 Like
6

Especially if that is the only passkey in your vault that shows such a behaviour, I maybe would add to that list: “Peanut may have a quirk in their passkey implementation” (wouldn’t be the first service ever…)

PS: Your phone is on the official ROM?

7

Yes. Folks, I use a very standard Google Pixel 10 Pro, it is updated daily. I do not do ANYTHING remotely weird with it. I write Rust and Nix and build a Linux distribution for my day job, I’ve been using Android since the G1, I promise I have some basic competency.

And again, I’m not sure what to say about the confusion around the UX:

Coinbase also has ONE Passkey registered to my account, it is in Bitwarden, and the Passkey login UX for Coinbase.com in Chrome is IDENTICAL to the login flow as presented by Peanut.me.

Just did Google.com, same UX.

(Peanut.me is a PWA).

8

I really, really, really think this is because I had the Google Password Manager app disabled and it wasn’t updating. I assumed the core functionality was provided by Google Play Services / Google app, but maybe not. After the update, the UX changed slightly, and I have not been able to repro this after trying dozens and dozens of times.

tl;dr: pretty sure Google Password Manager was buggy, and has terrible confusing UX when acting as the passkey mediator.

9

Sorry, I didn’t question your competency – I thought more about a possible custom ROM that could contribute to your issue (or not).

As in the comments in your GitHub issue already implied: you can see on the popups that say “Google Password Manager”, that Google Password Manager can’t be disabled entirely on an Android phone… Keep us posted if the updates of Google Password Manager finally resolve it.

PS:

I know who that was. Will forward it to him. :wink:

2 Likes
10

Thanks Nail, you definitely didn’t but I figured I’d try to set the stage.

Really appreciate all of the thoughts and help from folks. Going to mark this as solved. I’ll update if I get any more data points.

:heart:

1 Like