Expand Pool of Special Characters Available in Password Generator

Not sure if this has already been requested, but is it possible to add additional special characters for password generator?

At the moment Bitwarden allows !@#$%^&*

Would it be possible to also include ()-_=+[{]};:’",<.>/?

Just FYI: I think this topic has been covered in the following feature requests:

Is those cover what you’re looking for consider adding a vote to them.

1 Like

Awesome - thanks Peter!

Why not extend the possible character set with a user-defined “real special chars”?

In Denmark we use æÆ, øØ and åÅ as plain ordinary “special” chars, but imagine a security if the password generator could use special chars like ®, «, ╔, √ etc.
I’m aware, that some site probably would refuse “illegal” chars, but most do actually accept them…

By making it a user-defines field, you (Bitwarden) don’t limit any special wishes…

1 Like

I think this answers my question then, but just to make sure. Is there no way I can set what characters are and are not used in the password? I was sure I was just missing where to configure it somewhere…Some of my sites do not allow any special characters (!@# etc.), some require it. Some require upper and lower case. Some require shorter lengths, some require longer. I’m used to keepass where I can set every single aspect of the random generator.

In the broswer addon you can select witch kind of characters should be used… I dont see the point?

Unicode characters are meaningful, such as the RAR archive password

Is this a planned enhancement?

Please allow Password Manager users to specify specific special characters to be used in a Generator generated password. Currently only this set “!@#$%^&*” can be selected, which is ridiculous. Please give us the ability to create our own set of special characters. Other password managers allow this.

I modified the title of this Feature Request topic to be more descriptive (was: “Improve random password generation”).

@QM.v5UfM_qGeDq9t-pn8 Welcome to the forum. I moved your post (and vote) to this existing thread.

This is how they do it in another password manager, editing allowed in the green box:

image

2 Likes

I’m imagining an “Extra special characters” option with something along the lines of ★☆≤≥⌘‽™©®°¢✓ßðþÞɦ♪♫→↑←↓ⱴŋμπ¥⅍ȜλœŒŊ+¾½⅛§¦áàéèíìóòúùýỳÁÀÉÈÍÌÓÒÚÙÝỲäëïöüÿÄËÏÖÜŸæøåÆØÅāēīōūȳĀĒĪŌŪȲãẽĩõỹÃẼĨÕỸâêîôûŷÂÊÎÔÛŶ•ąęįǫųşçĄĘĮǪŲŞÇ¤€ǵǴḱḰẃẂśŚ:;=£₩δあいうえちすたとふみアイウオサチテネ四上月山足文गफर, but the field would need some hover text with something like “Some websites don’t support it. Some characters may fail to show up in some older fonts. Depending on installed keyboard layouts, the characters may be hard or very hard to type on PC and phone, and sometimes impossible on TVs and consoles”.

I’m looking into the feasibility of a GitHub pull request, but it seems harder to figure out the code than I had feared.

I have found enough sites that limit special characters that I think this is useful. I agree it would be good to have both the ability to use a much expanded list and to specify a list. Not positive the best UX approach here, but it does seem we need a default list (what is there today), an expanded list of extra specials and the ability to type in a custom list to override. Maybe a button to set to a normal default and a button to set to an expanded list would work along with being able to click the list and type in the box to edit by removing some from the default, typing more, adding custom etc.

When using Bitwarden web vault on version Version 2023.12.0 and iOS mobile app, the special characters on the password generator are somewhat limited.

Looking at what Firefox does, would it be possible to extend these characters by adding these?

-_|/,;:.(){}+=<>

I think these characters are safe to be typed on any keyboard and are therefore safe.

2 Likes

Hi @jin92, welcome to Community :wave:

I’ve updated this to a feature request as you’re requesting something that doesn’t exist today!

Would you want these characters to be part of the default or more of an opt-in?

On second thought I would remove the pipe: | since it’s not easy to figure out how to use it if one doesn’t know which keys to press.

I would prefer these characters to be added by default.

So it would be this:

-_/\,;:.(){}+=<>

I have merged a few duplicate topics into this Feature Request thread.

I have also modified the title of this feature request to Expand Pool of Special Characters Available in Password Generator (was: “Password Generator Should Have More Character Set”). This makes the current thread more specific, and distinguishes it from the related (but different) feature request “Filter special characters in generated passwords per login”, which seeks to restrict the special characters used by the generator.

Note to Mods: Some related proposals and discussions can also be found in the thread “More Password Generator Enhancements (Comprehensive List)”, which was created by merging various unrelated enhancement requets. I would strongly advice against merging the current thread into that catch-all thread, because it makes dicussion and voting confusing.

あいうえちすたとふみアイウオサチテネ 四上月山足文
The parts you listed are Japanese and Chinese and are not special characters.

The part about Japanese and Chinese characters was actually intentional. :sweat_smile: On top of all the other ideas suggested in this merged thread, I’d wish good luck to any password cracking tools/bots who’d try to crack passwords with e.g. ち in them, as virtually all such tools are not designed for this kind of characters.

The same technically applies to all the characters I suggested above too, and probably to many others’ suggestions too, but nevertheless.

1 Like

It could be interesting to have kanji characters as it would be night uncrackable.

My proposal to add some characters was because I found the default set of special characters by Bitwarden too conventional.

In truth, using a length of 40+ password with a combination of the entire alphabet, digits and 8 special characters is robust enough.

Who would spend decades cracking a specific password in real life?

Storing a password in plain text is a problem.