Hey Everyone,
somewhere between Version 1.30 and 1.33 of the windows client the installer changed to use a per-user installation as a default when performing a silent install. For the love of god i couldn´t find any flag/option to create a machine-wide installation again.
Also i noticed, that the installer always downloads content from the internet. Is there any way to obtain an offline installer?
I’ve just spent three hours looking for this information myself. It’s not easy to figure out. I’m hoping someone at Bitwarden could make an actual help article for admins that lists the installer parameters and the additional info on offline/standalone installation. Here are the steps that I’ve found:
Disclaimer: These steps worked for me in my test environment but your mileage may vary
Parameters:
/S (case sensitive) Runs the installer silently with no graphical interface
/allusers (unsure of case sensitivity) Runs the installer for all users - requires UAC / admin creds
Reference: Windows silent install no longer system-wide · Issue #1454 · bitwarden/desktop · GitHub
Standalone/Offline:
Extract the .nsis file from the .nsis.7z file and then place a copy of the .nsis file in the same location as the installer executable before running the installer. Note that versions must match.
Both the installer executable and the .nsis.7z can be downloaded from here: Releases · bitwarden/clients · GitHub
Reference: Windows installer won’t work in restricted environment · Issue #508 · bitwarden/desktop · GitHub
Hey. That is exactly what i was looking for. Funny enough, that their support doesn´t seem to know about this themselfs.
It should really be turned into an help article.
Thanks for the feedback, the team is looking to include this in the documentation 