Today, out of the blue, without updating either Brave or the Bitwarden Password Manager extension, I suddenly get the message saying
âBitwarden Password Manager is disabled.
To re-enable it, accept the new permissions:
Display notifications.â
First question, is this legit? With polymorphic extensions and various scams, unusual technology demands set me on edge.
Second question: if this is for real, WTH? Suddenly disabling a product that I actively use, shortly after the 'weâre going to force you to use 2FA, and oh yeah, our implementation doesnât work correctly if you use an android device." Are you guys even testing? Or thinking about user experience?
Third question: Why do you need additional permissions? The functionality has been all over the map, sometimes offering to paste in the credentials and sometimes forcing me to use the extension and manually tell it to fill. Now the extension needs more permissions to do what? Is this going to make it consistent or simply allow it to fail as often as before?
I would appreciate anyone that can shed light on the increasingly dumpster fire experience I am getting.
Seems so, as âeveryoneâ got this message/request.
As @malum already noted, your browser deactivated the extension, as the extension requests new permissions.
As Iâm not with Bitwarden, I can only speculate⊠and my personal speculation is, that the extension getâs some kind of new notification functions, so that userâs can get notifications by Bitwarden in the app. (I think with recent changes, many requested to get better informed before those changes, preferably in their Bitwarden app they use, per notifications in advance⊠I think this may be an improvement in reaction to this âcritiqueâ).
But I could be totally wrong with my speculations.
It would be nice to get some kind of official clarification from Bitwarden (@dwbit, @eck?) about what change made the new permissions necessary. I suspect there will be many more user inquiries about why their extensions are suddenly disabled, and why re-enabling the extension triggers the prompt about accepting new permissions.
I also found this thread while double checking it was legit (in my case, Edge disabled the plug-in).
I have found and looked at the release notes for 2025.2.1
(and other components as 2025.2.2, directly on github) but none of these mention new permissions, as far as I can see, or why they are needed, so Iâm still weary to re-enable the extension.
In short, the new version of the extension needs the notification permission to be granted. Whatâs happening here is the browser is asking you to confirm thatâs okay. This is expected and required for future functionality.
To âcentralizeâ the discussion, I moved your post @Pardal into the thread, @Neuron5569 mentioned.
Following that, I changed the title now from âBitwarden Password Manager is disabledâ to âBrowser extension is turned off and requests additional permissions (March 2025)â.
What version of the Bitwarden browser extension is installed in the profile that is not prompting you to approve additional permissions? Go to Settings > About > About Bitwarden in the browser extension to check.
The most likely explanation is that you (or somebody else) already accepted the permissions in the other profile. As a simple check, in that profile (the one where you donât recall having accepted any new permissions), go to chrome://extensions/?id=nngceckbapebfimnlniiiahkandclblb. What does it say under âPermissionsâ?