Right now, the desktop app window can be minimized into the menu bar, but it’d be nice to expand this into a full-fledged menu bar mode where the app can live fully in the menu bar—giving the convenience of the browser extension when a browser window isn’t open.
The current “Hide to Tray” option is mostly useless, at least on the mac. Not to mention that “Tray” has no meaning in macOS, should be “Menu Bar”. 1Password has a very nice implementation of this.
Right—I should have specified this is a macOS request; I haven’t used BW on Windows.
Yeah, ‘Enable Tray Icon’ is especially not useful on Mac because the Menu Bar icon can’t re-open the application if the main window has been closed. Seems like the main point of a menu bar icon would be not having to keep the window open.
I would like to see this on Linux too if it is possible. This would be really useful 
This interface would be good, but more than this is hide the app in the dock.
I just can’t close it without closing the menu bar icon so the function to show it in the menu bar it’s useless.
This should be a feature!
I’m used to 1Password and now I wanna try new horizons, that’s why I’m using Bitwarden now.
It’s a great password manager for the price, really, but this feature makes a huge difference, HUGE. Whenever I’m switching apps with CMD + TAB, the Bitwarden icon there annoys me so much the same way it annoys me to see it on the dock. It makes no sense at all… it’s already in the top (menu) bar, so why can’t I just close it?
Tried with CMD + W and nothing, Bitwarden stays on the dock. Tried CMD + Q and it kills everything, even the process running in the background and showing the icon on the top (menu) bar.
I’m really excited about Bitwarden and I’m thinking about paying it, but this feature is a big weight on deciding if I should or should not spend the money, to be completely honest.
I agree. Having Bitwarden in my dock and CMD+TAB annoys me a lot and keeps me opening my web browser instead because it’s easier.
March 2020 - freshly downloaded the latest version, app still removes its menu bar icon once quit.
This should not happen. If anything, it should be treated as a bug. It’s super weird now.
There’s no point in having the menu bar icon, it’s just a smaller target for opening the same BitWarden app.
We’re tracking - thanks for everyone’s understanding and patience.
Any news on this? Is it planned? In roadmap?
In general I have nothing but great love and admiration for Bitwarden, but this is probably the feature I miss the most from 1Password…
This would be a great creature comfort! 
+1 for this as a user thinking of switching from dashlane premium to bitwarden premium.
The MacOS desktop experience just seems a bit disjointed to me.
We would expect Bitwarden to just live out of the menu bar and allow us to open the main app window from it.
when you close the main app bitwarden should keep running as a menu bar and should be able to be reopened (asking you to login if it locked de to timeout) again from the menubar.
Dock icon should only be tied to an open main app window.
At least thats my expectations. Seems more intuitive.
I couldn’t agree more with all that’s been said thus far about this issue in this thread. This should be an essential feature for the Mac OS version. Please prioritize this request, you nice folks at Bitwarden 
First of all, thanks for hiding the dock icon when not used.
What sccotttt’s requested in this original post is exactly what I want.
I am also in the process of migrating 1Password subscription to Bitwarden subscription.
Thank you for all the great work.
I like what the Tapbots guys did with Pastebot, as well.
This could also work as a fine alternative.
The part about running in menubar partially works with Close to menu bar option.
Shortcut keys though may not work as expected:
Someone had attempted to work on adding a menubar UI, but it was a bit clunky as it just embedded the full desktop app into the tray: Tray icon mini UI
I do see that a 3rd party has tried wrapping Bitwarden extension into a menubar-only Swift app (NOTE: this is not affiliated with Bitwarden): GitHub - jnsdrtlf/bitwarden-menubar: Bitwarden in the macOS menu bar
It would be interesting to see if something similar can be done in an Electron(JavaScript) App. Bitwarden already includes the browser plugin inside macOS Desktop app in order to support Safari. One issue would be if it is possible to sync info between the two UIs (i.e. single-sign-on, etc.).
You are right in that with some experimentation I have been able to get the menu bar to be less clunky.
I think the menubar extension you mention is closer to what I would expect from macos app.
GitHub - jnsdrtlf/bitwarden-menubar: Bitwarden in the macOS menu bar
Definitely is a positive direction, need to keep the main app open for biometrics though so I think there is still more work that could be done here.
Looking forward to any improvements bitwarden could make on this front.
Love the product just want to make suggestions to make it even better!
As for the 3rd party menu bar application mentioned by @cho-m:
I developed this in my free time because I wanted an easy way to access passwords, etc. without a browser or the application itself. It is nothing more than the Bitwarden browser extension wrapped in a WKWebView (macOS native WebKit Web View) inside of a NSPopover. As pointed out in this issue, this will not work for the more recent versions of the extensions due to the move from Safari App Extensions to Safari Web Extensions. In short, the communication between JavaScript and the application fails because native messaging is not supported in WebKit (e.g. chrome.runtime.sendMessage does not work).
Thus, I would actually refrain from using this application as it will no longer be updated and is stuck at version v1.48.1. I’m excited of what the Bitwarden team may introduce in the future! 
Anyone know if we have any hope in hell of ever seeing this?
Hey @eroux thanks for checking in! This one isn’t currently in development but we are looking at feedback. You can see the current Bitwarden roadmap here, or hear from the Product team what goes into creating the Bitwarden roadmap.
