App or extension?

In the case of Mobile operating systems (e.g. Android), as mentioned by vachan, the dedicated app is best since browser extensions were designed for desktop usage.

In the case of Desktop operating systems, in most cases you will probably be using the browser extension since it is more convenient with features like detecting webpages and autofilling.

The Bitwarden Desktop app is optional (other than for macOS Safari), but there are current (and possibly future) features that require installing it.

In my opinion, the current best feature that comes from adding the Bitwarden Desktop app is biometrics support on Windows (Hello) and macOS (TouchID).

Beyond that, the desktop app is a bit lackluster in its current state.

  • It doesn’t support auto-detection/auto-fill of other apps.
  • I guess it can be used as an alternative to the Bitwarden Web Vault for editing your data and sharing data via Bitwarden Send. The Bitwarden Browser Extension UI is not the best for doing a large amount of modifications.

It is possible that in the future, the desktop app may allow support for sync’ing login status across multiple browsers (to avoid re-logging in all the time) and other features since it can be set to continuously run in the background even after you close your browser.

It is perfectly fine to start with Mobile App on Android and Browser Extension on Windows/Linux.

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