HELP! cannot login to my Bitwarden properly

This morning I cannot get to my vault. On my cellphone I get message that an error has occurred and that is all. On my desktop I cannot unlock my vault and see any data. Then I tried again and it said my vault was empty (took almost a minute to unlock while it usually takes 1 second). Was OK when I went to bed but this morning Bitwarden is broken.

WAIT! I just now tried it again and it worked! What happened?

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I’m having the same problem. Can’t log in with the browser extension. New problem this morning. Have been using Bitwarden for years and have never experienced this.

Did you just now try again and it worked (like me?)

8:05AM CST Just now tried again with different browser and it worked OK.

We’re investigating some latency issues for the identity (login) service. Status updates are posted here: https://status.bitwarden.com

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10:23AM CST Still cannot unlock on my cell phone. Still working OK on desktop.
I get the same message whether I enter the correct uid/pwd or totally bogus uid/pwd.

no, still hasn’t worked for me. Although I have the opposite problem as you: doesn’t work on desktop, works on phone.

edit: by desktop I mean browser extension.

What a nasty and scary problem when Bitwarden is not functioning correctly. Guess they are working on it but no clue what is really broken or why.

I know! Really makes me realize how much I depend on Bitwarden and how I should maybe keep a local backup.

Thankfully Bitwarden’s services run in Azure which is typically fairly reliable with good up time.
That being said things can and will happen from time to time and thankfully Bitwarden’s great team works quickly to fix these as well.

There is a feature request and I believe plans on the roadmap to allow offline access and changes in the future.

This is a however a great time to touch on how important it is to always ensure a good consistent backup strategy with any password vault.
Your data is just that, your data and dedicating some personal time to ensuring your data remains safe can save you much possible headaches in the future. Good backups can prevent any issues where Bitwarden goes down, changes their business model and makes major changes (don’t ever see Bitwarden doing this, they even make it very easy to extract your data and don’t believe in vendor lock in), or even just in the event of human error and you fat finger something making an irreversible change.

Backup, backup, BACKUP!!!

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Can someone point to a guide or best practice for securely storing an up-to-date offline copy of the BW vault in case of emergency?

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Once I logged in. I did an export from BW to create a .csv file. I opened and then slightly modified the .csv file in MS Excel and then printed the spreadsheet columns that I wanted (sitename/userid/password ) and secured the printed file. Then I deleted the .csv file.

BTW - I still cannot unlock my Bitwarden vault on my Android phone at 10:40 CST

@cwr64 Ouch, not looking to store a plaintext, unencrypted copy of my entire vault on disk anywhere. That seems at odds with the idea of using a password vault at all.

I was hoping for something like “download this encrypted JSON, then decrypt if needed using your master password, use this command, etc…” e.g. some form of gpg etc.

As I mentioned, I deleted the file. Within a half-hour. My PC is in a home with nobody accessing it except me.

If any of you that can now unlock your BW vault using your cellphone who were not able to do it not long ago, please update this “ticket” so I can try it again on my cell phone (where it is still not working as of 11:24 CST). I get only the message “An error has occurred”.

I suggest doing one or both of the following:

  1. Export an encrypted .json of your vault, which can be used to restore the vault contents in case something became corrupted or you accidentally deleted an important item and it was purged from the Trash. **NOTE: you cannot restore an encrypted backup to vault that has been reset or had its keys rotated, so this is NOT a solution to restore your date if you ever get accidentally locked out of your vault.

  2. Create a secure, encrypted container using VeraCrypt, TrueCrypt, or an encrypted .dmg volume on MacOS. Save an unencrypted (plain text) .json export to this container. This is more work, but you can restore your vault contents to a new Bitwarden account, if necessary. You can also search this file for logins/passwords in an emergency.

Another note: if you have file attachments in your vault, they cannot be exported to a .json file, which is text-based and is not really meant for large, binary data files, such as images. So, you should backup any attachments you wish to preserve to an encrypted container, as mentioned above.

Hope that helps.

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OK here’s where I am now at 3:21PM CST.
I can unlock my vault from browsers on my W10 desktop.
I can also unlock my vault from a browser on my Android Samsung cell phone.

I cannot unlock my vault from the BW app on Android Samsung cellphone - I get the same error message I have been getting all day today.

Should I uninstall and reinstall the BW app on my cellphone? Or if the BW site is still not “fixed” please update this “ticket” to say so and when it might get fixed.
CR

Hi @cwr64 - sorry to hear your phone still won’t access Bitwarden.

Here is what I would try:

  1. Logout of Bitwarden by clicking the three-dot menu at the top-right corner of the Unlock screen. Restart your phone. Try logging in again.

  2. If that doesn’t work, go into your Android settings then go to Apps → Bitwarden → Storage → Clear Data. This will ‘reset’ the app on your phone. Try logging in again.

Hope one of those work!

P.S. If you want to open a support ticket, you will have to contact the Bitwarden CS team directly - the website you are posting to here is just the community forum where Bitwarden customers hang out, not the support team. :smile:

I cannot do #1 of the items you mentioned because I am not even logged in.
I did #2 and then rebooted before trying BW again and there was no change to the problem.
When I launch BW on my phone it immediately takes me to a screen which has only 3 choices, one of which is to log in.
The other 2 choices are of no interest. One of them is to create a new account.
So I enter my email address and Master Password to log in. Then about 2-3 seconds later I get the same error message I have received all day. I get the same error msg if I enter a totally bogus email and password, btw.
So what to do now - uninstall/reinstall BW?
If I need to open a ticket with BW support, exactly how do I do that?

Sorry to hear that those suggestions did not work. I suggest you contact the Bitwarden CS Team here:

Sent the “Help Me” email to BW Support

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