I go to a new website which requires a new login. I create one. Both Apple Keychain and 1Password asks if I want to save it, but not Bitwarden. So it’s saved with Keychain and so when I return to the site, it’s already populated because of Keychain, but I also want it stored in BitWarden. There does not appear to be any way to store it, apart from manually creating a new login and copying and pasting each field, which seems cumbersome and strange when others will record it just fine. Am I missing something about this pretty basic functionality Bitwarden seems to be missing?
Bitwarden has an Add Login Notification feature. A couple notes:
- I think your vault needs to be unlocked to support this. At least that is what I see based on some quick tests.
- make sure you didn’t select Disable Add Login Notification in options.
I do get a notification on a site like Chase if I type in some random characters for login/password, as long as Bitwarden is unlocked.
Also, Bitwarden’s auto-detection (both for new/modified accounts and auto-fill) has issues on some sites.
There is a mega GitHub issue for all new login notification issues:
I’m finding that most all of the time, Bitwarden does not work for adding logins. That is, most sites. This can be really cumbersome and can lead to losing passwords and having to reset them. It may be that this is a reason to stick with 1Password, which would be too bad, but honestly, this is a pretty important function.
At which point you call up Bitwarden, create the new password in it and then put the new password into the site. That way you know that it is stored.
I’m unconvinced by assertions that other software always “just works”. I first programmed a computer in 1980 and, in my experience, no software always “just works”. Software is just sitting behind the screen, laughing at me and waiting for the opportune moment to make me swear at the computer.
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Feature request: I would like to give more than just a single like to some replies.
PS: Today While writing this at my location it is was April 1st.
PPS: In my location April Fools’ Day Jokes are “allowed” all day long.
It is after noon here.
Do you really mean “noon” or midnight ???
This can work when you have a totally fresh login to fill, but it has to be said, it is counter intuitive and feels like a workaround. In any case, here is where that does not work. Some passwords I want in Keychain as well. Those might be a login to a site which I am less concerned about security, like one which does not involve any sensitive data. That way it just appears when I go to the site. So I let Keychain create the strong password and then I want to save it in Bitwarden. I want to do this before I login. In 1Password I can instruct it to save the login and password on the webpage. With Bitwarden, it seems I would have to create a new login and copy and paste each field manually, which is tedious.
In a perfect world, one would only, exclusively use Bitwarden and that would mean I could do as you suggest, but I don’t, because Keychain is super convenient at filling out logins without doing anything. That’s not suitable for all websites, but it is for many and so I want that saved in both.
To me, saving a login is one of the most basic things a password manager should do, so this is disappointing. You suggest a workaround, but as I say, it’s counterintuitive and 1Password and Keychain does it perfectly. For the most part, in the many years I have been using it, 1Password and Keychain does just work.
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@Tin_Robot 1Password has had more time (first release in 2006 vs Bitwarden in 2016) to polish their product. Also, their higher pricing structure means they have more funds to hire more engineers resulting in faster feature development (which they can then charge more money for).
Keychain is Apple’s native solution and is even older than 1Password (1999) and very few companies can compare to the amount of assets Apple has available. It also follows Apple’s design approach of locking in an ecosystem of Apple products.
Bitwarden is working with less resources. Their current autofill logic is a port of the older (less capable) open-source 1Password extension and I agree that the auto-save is less stable/consistent than competitors right now.
At the end of the day, only you can decide how much you value a feature. My general usage is closer to @Davidz. I usually don’t use Keychain since I need cross-platform support across macOS, iOS, Windows, and Linux.
There are a large number of people coming from 1Password/Lastpass/etc. usually due to lower cost of Bitwarden (Free-$10/yr), so it makes sense to price out the difference in features. If the amount you value the features is more than the extra cost of 1Password, then there should be nothing wrong with paying for 1Password.
In my case, Bitwarden’s feature set was sufficient when I migrated and (as a software engineer) I preferred the fact that Bitwarden is open-source.
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I appreciate that Bitwarden is newer and has less resources, but I have to assess an app based on it’s functionality. For a Password app to not be able to automatically, or even manually, ask to save a password seems like a significant issue to me. It is free, which is great, and I don’t need too many bells and whistles (in fact, many of the extra features in 1Password I never even use), but I do need it to perform what I would consider basic password function and so this is an issue which I may end up having to pay for with 1Password if it never gets fixed in Bitwarden. That’s me. If it’s not important to you, then that’s great that it works fine for you.
Given that Bitwarden acknowledged there are issues, I think it is safe to assume that it will get fixed. They have assigned an engineer to work on GitHub issue, which may result in a better implementation.
However, since all bugs/features get triaged & prioritized and there is no guaranteed timeline for this, I think it makes sense for you to consider using a password manager that has the features you need right now.
Maybe someone on Bitwarden team can give a more concrete timeline.
From a user support perspective, all we can do is provide alternative workflows / workarounds until the code is improved.
If none of these work for your use case, then I see nothing wrong with choosing an alternative product. That is what I would have done if Bitwarden was missing something I find essential.
You can always take another look 1-2 years from now (or follow the GitHub issue(s) or possible Bitwarden Feature Requests) to see if your minimum features are available.
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Bitwarden seemed to acknowledge only that it happens on some sites, but the reality is that it happens on most sites. Having said that, my particular issue is that even I want to tell Bitwarden to save a login, there is no way to do that. So if Keychain inputs a login, I go to Bitwarden and want BW to save that login, I can’t. I’ve not seen that particular issue acknowledged, so I should mention it over at the Github site, I guess.
If enough users filled out the form, I think Bitwarden should have an impression of how widespread issue is.
I believe there are a number of other forum posts on issue too.
There is probably 2 aspects to this:
- If auto-save notification logic were working, it would prompt user to save username/password on next page load.
- A possible new/enhanced feature so that the auto-save logic (or some other site-parsing logic) is run when user opens Bitwarden extension and then clicks
+button. Not sure if this requires a separate feature request, or if it will be handled in existing issue.
My Bitwarden also won’t offer to save new passcards, so I have to be very careful about adding new websites, even on this community forum it did not save it. I do not have Disable Add Login Notification checked, so that isn’t the problem. I am on Windows 10 latest version and am using Brave Browser Version 1.22.71 Chromium: 89.0.4389.114 (Official Build) (64-bit). This is troublesome as each new site takes 5 minutes to save a passcard when all is said and done, going back in to test, taking notes, then manually adding a passcard. It would be nice to hear some sort of encouraging news on this. I signed up two days ago. I’m wondering if it might have something to do with the pop-up blocker in Brave but I don’t know if there is a way to white list apps like bitwarden from being blocked.
To solve the problem enter the data first in Bitwarden … take a look at the links:
Best regards
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Right, but if the login is already populated on the site (by Keychain), when I press the + button, it creates a blank login, so I have to manually copy and paste each field because Bitwarden fails to see the data. So yeah, there is a work around, but it’s clumsy and it surprises me when three other password managers I have tried have no problem with this function of saving a password. It’s one thing that Bitwarden does not automatically pop up to ask to save it, but another that it won’t even fill out a manual request to save.
If you have already created an account for the site, you must NOT click on “+” … click on the BW icon and you will already find the link of the site, add the other data, such as user and password and then click on save… these are operations that you will have to do only once, therefore, in my opinion the discomfort is NOT excessive …
Best regards
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So if I have a website with the login populated already, how do I save that into BW? The only way I can see is to copy and paste each single field into a new BW login. To me, that is cumbersome because I am often in the middle of doing something else and just want to easily save the password. Clicking plus starts with the website filled in, but nothing else.
It sounds like you need to export iCloud Keychain passwords to Bitwarden. Having two password managers going at once will be very confusing to you and the two password managers. It’s best to stick to one at a time.
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I don’t agree. They both have a different use. I like that Keychain has the password right there without doing anything else. Super easy. For anything which demands more security, I need to use a third party app like Bitwarden. I suppose it comes down to the fact that Bitwarden just doesn’t recognize passwords on a website in order to pop up and offer to save, like other apps do. One has to decide if that’s a big issue or not.