Desktop app 2026.4.0 Usability Feedback and Bugs

Ask the Community Password Manager
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41

A little bit Off-Topic but still related to this UI-bugs.

Yesterday morning I sent a message to the Bitwarden support (via Contact support Help Center | Bitwarden). I thought that it could be a good idea to send a message direct to the Bitwarden support to inform about a problem, bug, just give some feedback. In this request I mentioned that there is a growing discussion about the new UI design of the desktop app/last update, I added two links to these discussions here in the Community.

The response: An AI generated answer with some general info and URLs for using Bitwarden. The “AI” understood not what my request was about. I answered, but I have no idea if still a human will read the request, or the case is closed now.

This is another topic in the list of changes we see here - which leads me to the question: “What is happening at the moment with Bitwarden, strange updates, price change some months ago, no/far too late communication, the company/new CEO, their values …?”

42

Once a company starts doing this like this, it means function and usability has permanently taken a back seat to rampant monetization of features and VPs who need to make arbitrary changes to justify their bonuses. I have never seen a piece of software recover from this. It is incurable.

43

Hey @clausimausi the team is already aware of the ongoing discussions and is why posts were kicked off to collect additional feedback.

@mausfield the team is taking this feedback very seriously and we’ll be sharing more soon (getting the community involved/early feedback).

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That’s what I wrote before (in the other thread) - I am very thankful that Mary B is following what is happening here. She shows interest and (hopefully) this leads to a productive dialogue between users and UI team. It is something what I “expected” long time ago, also for other parts of the app.

45

“We’re listening!” is what devs say to feedback they’re planning to ignore. I have zero trust in this corporation after dozens of similarly unpopular degenerations of the UX.

46

@mausfield : And “listening” in just the beginning. “Understanding”, “accepting”, “implementing” could the following steps.

47

I’ve been using Bitwarden premium for years and I have to say I truly HATE the new UI design. I read the post about wanting to make the desktop app and web app more similar. The question is, shouldn’t you have picked the superior layout instead of the inferior one to go with?

UI matters a lot because it has to do with real world usability. When usability gets worse people start jumping ship. I am truly considering moving to a different password manager even if I have to pay more… your new UI interface sucks that bad.

48

I don’t know but i suspect this UI change is the new CEO Mike Sullivan trying to make his mark. His blog post screams out 1 thing: that he was never a USER of BitWarden before becoming CEO. Why am i surprised that the updates coming out lately have been terrible for USERS. Look, you pissed me off enough to make me sign up and write this. All i want is to pay my $10 dollars annually and NOT have to talk about BitWarden. Ever. Why am I here? Why do I have to be here? People want consistency. Nobody asked for these changes. The UI has gone from good to bad to worse. First you get rid of the folder view unless it’s clicked on (an extra click). Then you make the main view fit only like 5 items on the screen. It’s a click and scroll fest now. The best password manager is one that does it’s job quickly and does not disrupt the workflow. I should have to spend less than 5 or 6 seconds in the BitWarden interface. A GOOD password manager lets users go in and out to do the job quickly with minimal clicks, minimal disruption to workflow. This is a bad UI update that nobody asked for. Listen to the community. Be humble enough to acknowledge your mistakes. REVERT IT BACK, PLEASE.

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Hey @mgrotke we’ll be sharing some design concepts soon to gather community feedback on our plans, stay tuned!

50

@dwbit @Mary_Blabaum Let me just put the following out there…

Of course, soliciting (and taking into consideration) user feedback is important, and a serious effort to do so will certainly be appreciated.

On the other hand, I am concerned that the product design team is now frantically throwing together new ideas on an ad hoc basis, which will then be presented to the community to see if anything sticks.

The problem with such an approach is that even us end users are not experts on UX and UI, and individual users will likely offer parochial reactions focused on their personal preferences and pain points. It is known that focus groups can yield misleading results that are dominated by the loudest voices (who may not be the most thoughtful or insightful participants), and a wide open call for feedback on social media may yield even lower signal-to-noise ratio.

In my opinion, UI/UX design/redesign must involve communication with users, but it should not necessarily start there. Good design must start with research. This means reviewing the literature (e.g., recent discussions here have mentioned UX principles such as functional consistency and Fitt’s Law); scouring the the forum for relevant feature requests and past UI/UX-related complaints and discussions; and conducting quantitative usability testing (either in a laboratory setting, or via telemetry — which would need to be on an opt-in basis only, for obvious reasons), to collect data on how real users interact with the products. Only with this research completed and analyzed should any ideation begin for design improvements, and this would then be a good point to directly solicit user feedback (preferably using structured and quantitative methods).

Finally, I would like to point out that any user feedback must be interpreted with the understanding that the Bitwarden user base is not a monolith. There are subpopulations who each prefer different clients, and there are subpopulations who use the products in radically different ways (for example, some users have strong preference for keyboard navigation; some users use Bitwarden as a bookmark manager in addition to its core function as a password manager; some users manage large numbers of login accounts for each online service and will have different needs than users with only a small number of login accounts per site; there are power users who prioritize productivity/functionality/security over UI modernity/simplicity; etc.).

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I am afraid this is too complex and would take too much time. Because it was never done before. But @Mary_Blabaum - with her experience in developing UI - should know it that it is needed to do such research before releasing such an UI update…

For years the UI team had the chance to get in contact with the users, but it never happened. Yes, I read many times that they (also other Bitwarden teams) “listen”, they follow what is happening here. But never we had a conversation about the UI or other parts of the app. Or that someone just showed interest, or asked. I remember the “feedback” we got about labels or individual/pre-defined item types, and these were just a “No!”.

And this it the point I critique for a long time - it is a monologue here. Users post and post and comment, give ideas. But the users almost never get constructive feedback from the Bitwarden team. I just read may times that the Bitwarden team listen (but “listening” is not enough, if they did) …

Of course, the moderators and users here are very helpful, they listen, they answer and help. Thats great. But I would love to see such a feedback from the Bitwarden team also.

This issue with the user interface shows – in my opinion – that there was never any real interest in engaging in dialogue with users. After all, we’ve been seeing this kind of UI in Bitwarden for years (I also mentioned this many months ago), and now – with the latest update – that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Now, I expect that the Bitwarden team wakes up and shows more interest to get into a dialogue with the users. This Community is not just made for the users, it is also the perfect place to get in contact with users - to create a dialogue between users and the Bitwarden team.

In case you want to get an example for true dialogue between developers and users - check e.g. the Agenda app (MacOS only), they also use the Discourse platform for their communication with users. Just some weeks ago the developer asked “You asked for function X, but I wonder how would you like to use it?” So, they did not just added a new function, they tried to understand the users needs and wishes.