It’s Friday night, and my Windows 11 computer was sleeping for the past five hours. I unlocked the computer and got a Windows notification of “Bitwarden - Restart to update.” Apparently, version 2026.1.1 was ready to install.
I clicked “Close,” and the BW desktop popped up its own dialog, saying “Restart to update.” I clicked “Restart” and waited for about 90 seconds, but nothing happened, so finally I clicked the icon in the task bar and I opened BW. After logging in, I got another Windows notification, leading to a BW dialog. This appears to be an infinite loop.
Annoyed after several iterations, I finally downloaded a fresh install and tried to run it. It claimed that BW is still running, even though my taskbar claimed otherwise. I tried “Retry” a couple of times and still got the same thing. Finally, I opened Task Manager, and discovered three orphan BW processes. I killed them manually, then told the installed to retry, and it gave an error message.
I ended the installer and tried it again, and finally, it succeeded and now my BW desktop appears to be updated to 2026.1.1.
Why did I have to go through all this? Why didn’t the update installer deal with the orphaned tasks and just do its job?
This is happening again (April 2, 2026) while trying to update to 2026.3.1. After choosing Help > Check for updates, I’m informed an update is ready, followed by the alert I need to restart.
Clicking restart appears to exit BW, but it never reopens. Checking Task Manager, I see an orphan process.
After several iterations of this, I left Task Manager open. First, I exited BW to ensure that no orphan tasks were running. TM showed nothing. I then started BW and started the update process again. When I clicked “Restart” with TM monitoring, I watched as each of the BW tasks ended, then one started, entitled “Bitwarden - (additional text cut off by a narrow “Name” column in TM).
This time, BW restarted properly and shows the new version.
Somehow, I doubt that having TM monitor the install/restart process is what caused it to succeed, but clearly there’s still an issue with the BW updater.
I went through the process several times, each time getting this error. Then I went to Task Manager, and even though BW did not appear to be running, there were two orphan tasks. After ending them, I restarted BW and tried the update process, and that time, it succeeded.
Why does BW keep leaving orphaned tasks? Is it related to the fact that sometimes, I see a second BW icon on my task bar? Even now, as I look at the task bar, I see the one I pinned, and at the end, there’s a second BW icon.
So I’m typing this as I’m trying to work with BW.
I exited BW, and the second icon disappeared. However, opening Task Manager, I saw a task still running, so I killed it.
Now, if I click the pinned icon, I see four tasks appear in TM, then three disappear, but t don’t get a BW window. If I click the icon again, then I get a BW window and I can login. When I close that, there’s still a task running. If I click the icon once more, BW opens up without requiring me to login, and it puts another icon on the taskbar.
The following day, after an overnight shutdown of the computer…
When I click the BW icon on the task bar, the BW screen flashes momentarily and then I see nothing on my monitor. When I click it a second time, then I get the BW login screen and a second icon on the task bar.
If I close the BW window, the second icon disappears. If I click the original BW icon again, BW opens but it’s already logged in.
Sorry to hear you’ve had the related problems with the desktop app since at least February. I don’t use the built‑in update mechanism, so I’m unfamiliar with what’s going on, but here’s some information and a possible workaround:
Bitwarden spawns four processes when running, each for different reasons, including increasing security to protect what’s in memory.
When you close the Bitwarden app, it should close all spawned processes; if it doesn’t, that’s a bug. Bugs should be reported, but they usually need to be exactly reproducible or they may be unceremoniously closed.
Your installation seems to be running unpredictably. A common troubleshooting step is to uninstall and reinstall the app; if you file a bug now, you’ll likely be asked to do that. If uninstalling and reinstalling fixes it, the underlying issue often is ignored because it’s hard to reproduce.
So, exit the desktop app, make sure all Bitwarden processes are gone, remove the data directory, reinstall, and see if the issue goes away. If the built‑in update mechanism keeps failing in the future, install the program manually each time there’s an update — it’s more manual, but it avoids some automatic-update bugs. For some programs, this can also be a safer method, since the installer can be checked on VirusTotal before installation; this may not be true for the Bitwarden desktop installer, though, because the EXE appears to be a downloader + installer.
Thanks, Neuron5569. I uninstalled BW (which automatically deleted the data directory) and installed a freshly downloaded V2026.4.0. Windows did intercept with the “not sure this is safe” message, but I told it to go ahead. At this point, it seems to be operating properly, including ending all tasks when I exit BW.
Before I uninstalled, I grabbed a screen shot of the settings so I could replicate them after reinstall. I noticed a couple of settings seemed to have been changed behind my back: [ ] Show tray icon and [ ] Start to tray icon were on, even though I’d cleared them when I first installed (and oddly, the icon never showed in the tray). I wonder if one of the updates in the past corrupted something in the data directory.
I’ll continue to monitor, heeding your advice about doing updates manually. I presume those don’t require uninstallation and data directory deletion? …thanks!
The developer changed some app autostart behaviors recently. I don’t know the exact changes, but it seems to include how the app decides to start in the tray. New capabilities can bring new bugs.
When I update Bitwarden (downloaded manually from GitHub), I exit the app and install the new version over the old one. In the past, overwriting sometimes failed and I had to stop lingering processes manually, but that hasn’t happened recently.
