I think I’m having the same problem, although I’ll note that my problems with biometric unlocking with the Firefox extension on Windows 10 started on the 2023.7.1 release and became much worse with teh 2023.8.2 release.
Before 2023.7.1, biometric unlocking worked perfectly in Windows 10 with Firefox every time. Tap the locked extension icon brings up the Windows Hello screen, supply fingerprint, Hello screen disappears, Bitwarden extension is unlocked.
After the 2023.7.1 release, Hello Screen appears, supply fingerprint, then Hello screen persists. Click off the Hello screen and it disappears and the extension is unlocked. Clunky but usable.
Now, after the 2023.8.2 release, I supply my fingerprint on the “Hello” screen and sometimes I get a “Welcome, My Name” response from “Hello” and sometimes the Hello screen disappears. But, regardless, the extension remains locked.
Biometrics is completely unusable for me now. I had to reconfigure the options in the desktop app to not use Windows Hello and not allow browser integration, then configure the FF extension to not use biometrics. Now the only way to use the extension is to supply my Master Password. I have BW configured to lock on closing FF, so if I keep it open all day, I have to unlock BW only once.
I don’t know what the sidebar option is; could someone explain that for me? Meanwhile, no biometrics with BW for me
Thank you for all the responses, I now use the sidebar who works well (thanks @Neuron5569 ).
@Ed_LaCrosse instead of using the extention button you can use the sidebar button or ctrl-alt-y to open bitwarden in the sidebar.
Check out this response
Thank you for the response. I added the sidebar to Firefox and tried using it to unlock Bitwarden with biometrics. It doesn’t work. When I supply my fingerprint, I see a message to the effect, “Waiting for confirmation from the desktop” that doesn’t go away. If I click off the Hello screen, it goes away but the extension remains locked.
Incidentally, ctrl-alt-y does absolutely nothing for me. I must be doing something wrong. Edited to add: it’s alt-shift-y that brings up the Bitwarden sidebar.
I’m convinced that the problem is a version mismatch between the desktop and the extension, but I really don’t know what the problem is.
The version of my extension is 2023.7.1 and the version of the desktop app is 2023.8.2.
Sometimes I have to close and reopen the sidebar for it to work.
I’m running the same versions of both as you are. I just tried using biometrics to unlock my extension using the sidebar. I opened and closed the sidebar 5 times and no joy.
I cannot use biometrics at all with the FF extension.
Hello,
I tried the unlock option with windows hello.
When I open the desktop application and log in with windows hello, I can’t use biometrics in the extension (and sidebar). I’ve done a few tests and I think you need to use the password to unlock the desktop application in order to use biometrics in the extension.
I’ve used biometrics to unlock the extension many times before the July release. I never needed to unlock the desktop application specifically to do so. I’ve set it up to start on Windows startup, and I’ve configured it to unlock with biometrics, but as long as the app was running in the background, the extension would solicit my fingerprint via Hello, I’d supply it, and it unlocked. There was no need to unlock the desktop via Hello or via the Master Password.
Things began to go squirrely for me when the July desktop release (and its companion FF extension release) came out (see above). But I was still able to get the extension to unlock via biometrics, even though the behavior was not what I was used to.
I just tried unlocking the desktop then trying to unlock the extension via biometrics and no joy.
I understand now that Bitwarden support has acknowledged that the FF extension and desktop version don’t match and biometrics will not work until the FF extension that matches the desktop app is released. Until then, I will have to use the Master Password to unlock the extension.
Note, though, that the 2023.8.2 Windows release will unlock via biometrics. It’s just not communicating properly with the 2023.7.1 FF extension release.
encountering this same issue, Firefox 117, Windows 11, desktop 23.8.3.
Just discovered there is a 2023.8.3 release for Firefox available on GitHub, this may resolve the issue but not sure how to package it for installing into the browser. Is there a reason why the Firefox extension hasn’t been updated on addons.mozilla.org?
Firefox extensions have an .xpi name extension (or a .jar in some cases). As this is a .zip, I am not sure changing name.zip to name.xpi and install (open with Firefox) is the right thing to do.
Following your post I found out that 2 weeks ago there was also a [2023.8.2 release].
So my conclusion is either the 2023.8.3 isn’t ready for the release (still with errors) or will be released soon. I think it is safe to wait just a bit longer.
Also experiencing this. With Firefox and Edge, on both Windows and macOS across three separate computers. I’ve tried uninstall the Bitwarden desktop app, Reinstalling. Same with the browser extensions.
This is strange, I was just able to get everything to work on my laptop but my desktop won’t
edit:
apologies if this has already been mentioned but it looks like this happening with desktop version 2023.8.3, when i was on desktop 2023.7.1 everything worked fine
or ctrl-alt-y to open bitwarden in the sidebar.