Most duplications systems have two parts. Identification, delete or merge.
Just having merge would be a great improvement. I see duplicates when using the tool. If I just could say, merge these 2, that would be awesome.
If the tool could say hey, here you have exactly the same domain, and username and password in the same vault, I will automerge that for you even better.
If it could say, here we have the same domain, and username but different passwords, this was updated most recently, and allow me to pick the one i want. Cool,
While doing this merge, the history will be merged, and the not selected password get stashed in history.
What should be done if they have different TOTP or Passkeys? Or, if there is a custom attribute that autofills, such as “PIN”? Merging “1234” and “5678” probably would break the login.
Bottom line, merging is much more complicated to automate than one might imagine. Much safer (from a mess/corruption/liability perspective) probably would be to have a “Similar Vault Items” report, where one could check those fields they want compared and then display groups similar vault entries that the user could manually address.
Are you working for Bitwarden? I can offer you some time to work through algoritms and datastructures to make it stable and work in a way, where people can change their minds.
If not, why do you bother put peoples ideas down? Let people wish for things and Bitwarden can explore what is feasable for them to build.
Bitwarden employees can be identified by the Bitwarden logo badge overlayed in the corner. @DenBesten is not a Bitwarden employee (and neither am I, for the record).
It would be nice if all feature request threads worked like this. However, in cases when Bitwarden assesses that a particular feature request is not a sufficiently high priority to devote resources to at the moment, there often ensues an accumulation of comments from users who express frustration, or worse — malign Bitwarden’s developers. Thus, it should probably not be surprising that other users, who may understand and agree with Bitwarden’s current priorities, also post their own perspectives on the requested feature.
Feature request threads that have remained open for a long time usually also get a large number of comments claiming that the requested feature should be easy (or even trivial) to implement. For users who feel this way, the quickest way to get their pet feature implemented would be to contribute their own code, as Bitwarden is an Open Source project.
I’m sorry that my intention was not clear. I had read through the thread, realized that although “duplicate” is being requested, it likely would meet only the basic of cases (e.g. reimporting a recent export), especially given that there are “last modified” timestamps.
The more common scenario (stated even by @pvn ) is dealing with entries imported from multiple sources. I have been through this many times, now being on my 5th password manager in 15 years and needing to merge in things like saved-in-browser from multiple computers/phones/browsers. In these cases, the entries would at best be “similar”. Working through this latter scenario involves good reporting tools followed by manual detective work and then some sort of “merge” function.
This thread is soon to be 6 years old. My thought is that if can refine the request into something “easy”, is much more likely to be selected for development. With this in mind, I have created another feature request New Report – Similar Vault Entries. We’ll see if that garners any votes.
And it does not need to stop there. After said report is developed, a future feature could be a button to “copy non-empty fields left-to-right” and a similar right-to-left button – but that is a whole new level of risk given that it involves writing instead of just reading.
For full context, the response from Bitwarden was:
"It poses a security risk for us for now as we do not know if the site(s) are safe, and we would need to validate these and all other global domains submitted, which might take up some internal capacity. "
It’s pretty crappy for people to post good faith suggestions for a product they love and support both financially and socially and to have other users “Well akshually” their suggestions and tell them to “just submit their own code.”
I have ~40 TOTP keys I’ve imported from Authy, and it would be convenient to quickly merge them with their corresponding logins in Bitwarden so they could be contained in one record.
I don’t think this use case is obscure, as anybody who’s used more than one password manager or 2-factor app is likely to have multiple duplicate entries as I do. Especially with the flood of people that had to leave Authy as I did.
Other password managers can handle this, and even contact managers like Google Contacts do a pretty good job of allowing you to merge records together.
Whatever Bitwarden can do to make transitioning in as easy as possible will be a net positive for everyone.
I don’t expect the system to detect duplicates for me. I would click merge on “google - me” then I would put checkboxes next to the account or accounts that I want to merge it with.
I am extremely frustrated with the development process. It reminds me of how Firefox took over 10 years to implement a custom scrollbar feature. I was on the verge of paying for the family plan, but after trying the free version, I am appalled. If a basic feature like this takes over six years to implement, it’s clear that user experience isn’t a priority. After reading through the forum, it seems loyal users are being completely ignored. OSS is not an excuse when you start charging for development and service. I’m done. I’d rather pay more for other services than deal with this.
For real now Bitwarden!!! Six years has past since the request for duplicate handler of some sort with great ideas and contribution from loyal and clever users here in this forum.
SIX Years! Please!!! I’m having a feeling that this feature is never going to happen since it’s not on your roadmap at all…
Answer us loyal users truthfully please!
Are ever going to se a duplicate handler? If yes, then When???
Thank you!
I have updated my duplicate finder tool to only contain a single HTML file where the duplicates are grouped together and you can manually delete the ones you want. Then you just import the updated file into Bitwarden without the duplicates.
We need this feature big time. In case of security we need to update our passwords frequently. I can’t understand why Bitwarden is not taking this feature serious enough.
I agree, that this feature would be very useful, though I don’t see the connection to “updating passwords (frequently)”.
Here I don’t agree. Already since a few years, the recommendations have changed drastically. NIST doesn’t recommend a frequent change of passwords as it doesn’t increase security (given that the passwords are already “strong” and there is no concrete “reason” for a change of the password, like signs of that password being compromised etc.).
"3.1.1.2 Password Verifiers
The following requirements apply to passwords:
…
6. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT require users to change passwords periodically. However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator."
