I understand that the team would like to support a wide variety of use cases, but in my specific case I consider the new UI to be a downgrade from the previous version. It presents form and center a plethora of options I will never use, and now hides away the features I most use.
In my use case, I consider bitwarden to be primarily a password vault. I want to open it up and instantly see the folders I have created to organize my passwords so that I can quickly access the one I need. This is now hidden by default and must be expanded. Instead the default menu appears to be âAll itemsâ which I find to be terribly unhelpful for locating items I need since I do not set nor customize these groupings.
Instead I see a bunch of times in the sidebar that seem far more appropriate for the title bar. âImportâ and âexportâ are redundantly and irremovably on the sidebar when they are already appropriately listed under the âFileâ menu bar. Even for people who use these options, itâs hard to imagine that they use them so frequently they need to constantly displayed in the side bar. âCollectionsâ seems entirely redundant with folders. âGeneratorâ and âSendâ should also be solely in menu bar menu instead of the side bar. I understand not everyone will use the application exactly how I do, but it just seems so cluttered and clunky now.
When the same option is in multiple places and some of them donât make sense it feels difficult to under the logic and layout. If I imagine that bitwarden might have some feature Iâd want I donât know where to look because it feels like it could be anywhere.
Thanks for the feedback! There are more updates coming to the desktop app, which expand and align functionality with other clients, such as sorting options when the sidebar is collapsed etc..
There are other inconsistencies and sub-optimal design choices in the new Desktop UI. Perhaps a UI feedback thread should be opened for the Desktop v2026.1.0?
My main criticism of the new interface I would like fixed:
Drop-down menus/ children are egregiously tabbed, making the UI appear messy (changing width). Improvement would be all items appear in-line with the parent.
Send/Generator buttons now appear in the menu, meaning those with large vaults have to scroll âmilesâ to get to those options. Improvement would be to return them to the bottom of the left pane in own section (like previous UI).
Why have import/export buttons been prompted to the main interface? Seems like an odd design choice. Improvement would be to move them back whence they came.
Middle pane (account list) is not resizeable any more. I have to resize the entire window to see more of the account names, which makes the details pane massive and leaves lots of empty space. Improvement would be to allow resize of center pane.
I can resize the left pane smaller than the width of the bitwarden logo, causing an ugly scroll-bar to appear. Improvement would be not to allow that.
Looking forward to these issues being resolved soon.
I strongly agree with all the comments made. The re-design is simply too cumbersome and lots of text cut-off. Itâs clearly trying to emulate the web vault, but at least the web vault is correctly proportioned.