Firefox Biometrics

Hello,

Now that Make native messaging optional has been resolved in Firefox, would it be fine to revert Remove biometric from firefox ?

I’m one of the users eagerly waiting for the firefox biometrics integration. If this is not something already in the backlog, I can always create a new PR and contribute :slight_smile:

Clients / Repos Affected:

  • Web

The team discussed this today during our standup and we’re going to put a card on our board for this to key off of the FF version in the nightly that supports it, to ensure there’s a min version (vs. binary check).

The issue is that one of our team tested over the weekend and again this morning and it appears while the optional permission works, there is another issue that needs to be addressed with other promises that invalidate the “user input” detection, so it will require some additional tweaks in how we request permission. Unless you feel you have a clear path for this to work, please stay tuned and we’ll get this turned back on for FF at that min version soon.

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This is now live! Bitwarden Browser Extension v1.49.0 will allow the conditional permission we need for native messaging for biometrics in FF v87+ and biometrics capability has been re-enabled now for Firefox. See: Add support for browser biometrics on Firefox >= 87 by Hinton · Pull Request #1668 · bitwarden/browser · GitHub

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Thanks for the bump.
I wasn’t aware there were a few more tweaks to be addressed. Glad to know it is solved!

For some reason, I still can’t see the “Unlock with biometrics option” even though my extension has been updated. Can anyone confirm?

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I am having the same issue

Firefox 87 is still in beta. If I understand correctly, you won’t be able to see the option until you upgrade to v87 when it’s officially released (or install Firefox beta).

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Seems not to be the case. FF 87 seems not to show the option either.

Chrome seems to work. Could please be clarified please what versions should work for FF?

Sorry all, this was completely my dumb and misunderstanding; my apologies for the wasted time and energy. This was merged before our release but our team didn’t have time to finish testing so it wasn’t included in the release. We’ll get a patch release out soon with this and other fixes.

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Just for the record. AddOn is updated for FF >= 87 and it works. Thanks a lot. :+1:

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Great news and thanks folks! Question: I’m necessarily on the conservative Extended Support Release (ESR) channel for Firefox (currently at 78.8.0esr). Is there any way I can get the biometrics update for use with this ESR version, even if it’s informal?

You can try this one: Release Version 1.48.0 · bitwarden/browser · GitHub which is where we had originally included it as an explicit permissions before retracting it in v1.48.1; however this version will not include Bitwarden Send, but if you’re okay with that in favor of having Biometrics in that browser version, this should work.

Thanks, that’s an option then. I just looked at
Firefox’s release management calendar and if I read it correctly, it seems that 78.9esr will be out on March 23 with the merge from 87. So maybe I just need to wait another week or so.

I just upgraded to Firefox 78.9esr (merged with FF 87) and then upgraded to the Bitwarden 1.49.1 extension. The release notes say “Add support for browser biometrics on Firefox >= 87 (#1668)”. I restarted Firefox after the update, but I am not seeing the biometric unlock button.

Any ideas?

I can see the biometric unlock button with Firefox 87 and the latest version of the Bitwarden extension. However, for some reason, I can’t get past enabling it:

I’m also using Bitwarden’s Desktop Appstore version.

Have you checked the option in the Desktop App’s settings to enable browser integration?
Snap155

Yes, that option is checked, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

On Windows 10 Pro using Firefox 78.9 esr 64-bit (which is merged with Firefox 87), I am unable to get the biometric unlock button visible using EITHER Bitwarden extension 1.49.1 OR 1.48.0 (after turning off verification).

So I am stuck. Is there some other issue at play here with the ESR releases of Firefox and Bitwarden? Can anybody get either of these versions of Bitwarden biometrics working with 78.9 esr?

Browser integration is otherwise enabled, and biometric unlocking is working fine in Chrome and the desktop app…

Edit: Oops! Sorry - you are on Windows. My bad.

You might try some of the solutions at the bottom of this thread:

It looks like there may be a few glitches in the latest release of the extension, but they are fixable with some minor tweaks until a new patch comes out.

What minor interim tweaks are available for FF 78.9 esr on Windows?
Related perhaps to the solution posted for MacOS – on my Windows system, I seem to have the filesystem components in place as shown below, for what it’s worth.

In the registry:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla\NativeMessagingHosts\com.8bit.bitwarden
Default = C:\Users\Jerry\AppData\Roaming\Bitwarden\browsers\firefox.json

The firefox.json file exists and contains:

{
“name”: “com.8bit.bitwarden”,
“description”: “Bitwarden desktop <-> browser bridge”,
“path”: “P:\Tools\Bitwarden\resources\native-messaging.bat”,
“type”: “stdio”,
“allowed_extensions”: [
“{446900e4-71c2-419f-a6a7-df9c091e268b}”
]
}

The name shown above for “allowed-extensions” exists in the browser-extension-data folder in my profile but is an empty folder.

The native-message.bat file exists and contains:

@echo off
:: Helper script for starting the Native Messaging Proxy on Windows.

cd …/
set ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1
set ELECTRON_NO_ATTACH_CONSOLE=1
Bitwarden.exe resources/app.asar %*

And the app.asar file exists; it is 34MB in sinze but is dated 3/18/2021.

Jerry