The feature was requested in 2018, and now we’re in 2025. Is there any chance it will be developed, or do we know if it’s on the roadmap for the coming years? It would be great to have it, as I believe it should be a fundamental feature.
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Any update on this highly requested feature? i found some Parent Permissions script on their Github but good luck on tracking that for over 12k passwords and over 120 collections. GitHub - bitwarden-labs/admin-scripts: Leverage scripts with the Bitwarden CLI to automate admin tasks
Yep I agree, the script is way too limited. I tried pimping that script a bit to fetch my needs (specified above) but more urgent tasks took priority… I’ll see if I manage to get back at it soon.
Anyway, some kind of ETA for this feature, should it be concerned at all like something BW wants, would be nice!
The lack of inherited permissions really confuses the users. Maybe when a new collection is created we need a pop up box that asks users if they want to copy permissions from the parent collection.
@bw-admin @go12 Is there an ETA for inclusion of this FR? It’s officially been 7 years since this request was created and promised many times over the years.
I’m also a KeePass user. Inheriting permissions on sub-collections is a must.
We have a need to keep login credentials for each of our customers in it’s own area (collection). Folders don’t work because from my understanding are not shared with other users. KeePass allowed us to created folders for each customer to track their credentials.
Wrote a GUI tool that roughly does the same as the parent permission inheritance script from bitwarden’s admin-scripts.
Allows me to have child permissions inherited from parent collections (not dynamically of course).
It’s a v0.0.1 so feedback, features requests (and/or help) are welcome.
See GitHub - netinvent/bitwarden_cli_toolkit: Quick and dirty GUI for collection permission inheritance
For the record, I’ve revised the title of this feature request to better reflect what is being proposed (previous title was: “Nested Inheritance: Shared subfolders to organize items inside collections”; revised title is: “Inheritance of Access Permissions for Nested Collections”).
Hello,
Is there any update on this topic please?
Any update on this? Seems like such a basic feature to have.
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Proposed Solution: Flexible Permission Inheritance
I strongly support this feature request. The ideal solution would be to allow an admin or owner to choose whether permission inheritance is enabled when they assign a user or group to a parent collection.
To make this even more flexible, when an admin does enable inheritance, they should also have the ability to explicitly deselect specific child collections that should be excluded from inheriting those permissions.
This design would offer the perfect balance of simplicity and control:
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Simplicity: Admins could enable inheritance for a parent collection to quickly grant access to its entire nested structure in one action.
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Granular Control: Admins could still “opt-out” specific, sensitive child collections from that inheritance, allowing for deliberate, individual permission assignment only where it’s needed.
The Problem with the Current Design
The current system, which never allows inheritance, is extremely cumbersome, especially for organisations with deep and wide nested collection structures. It forces admins to manually assign permissions for every single child collection.
This design has an unintended, negative consequence. It’s similar to forcing a mandatory password rotation every month. The intention is good (improving security), but the result is bad (it encourages users to set weaker, simpler passwords to cope).
In the same way, Bitwarden’s intention is to provide granular control. But the result is that admins are encouraged to create less isolated, less secure structures (like putting everything into one single collection) just to avoid the overwhelming task of managing permissions.
Edit: This proposal is rephrased with the help of LLM, but the idea is original.
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At this point, it’s genuinely hard to understand how a feature this core is still neither implemented nor even clearly scheduled.
Permission inheritance for nested collections is not a “nice to have” or an edge case featur. It’s a foundational requirement for anyone managing hundreds or thousands of collections in real-world environments.
What makes this especially frustrating is that, as of today, the only halfway decent solution is a community member who managed to build a basic GUI tool in Python in a matter of hours. While that effort is appreciated, it’s frankly absurd that a core access-control feature in a mature password manager is effectively delegated to ad-hoc external tools instead of being properly supported in the product itself.
Can the Bitwarden team please provide at least a rough ETA or a clear roadmap clarification? Even a high-level timeframe would be far better than the current silence.
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Following up on my previous post about the critical need for permission inheritance in nested collections—I’ve decided to build a temporary solution while we wait for the official Bitwarden implementation.
Introducing Bitwarden Permissions Manager: A simple web-based tool that automates permission synchronization from parent collections to child collections using the Bitwarden CLI.
Repository: https://github.com/matteocracco97/bitwarden-permissions-gui
What it does:
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Instantly sync parent collection permissions to all nested child collections
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Eliminates manual permission assignment for complex hierarchies
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Built with Laravel 12, PHP 8.2+, and Bitwarden CLI integration
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Simple setup with Laravel Herd (Mac, Linux, Windows)
Important Disclaimer:
This is a temporary workaround, not a replacement for native Bitwarden functionality. It’s meant to bridge the gap for organizations struggling with permission management while the official feature is being developed.
How to use:
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Install Laravel Herd (nice to have)
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Clone the repository
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Follow the setup instructions in the README
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Log in and sync permissions in seconds
The tool is open-source and community contributions are welcome. While this isn’t an official Bitwarden solution, I hope it provides some relief to anyone managing large collection hierarchies.
Special thanks to everyone in this thread who articulated the genuine need for this feature—your feedback made building this worthwhile.
This is causing a TON of friction in my enterprise environment with ~25k credentials over HUNDREDS of collections shared across ~100 groups.
We moved from Lastpass due to the security breaches and are seriously considering moving back due to the lack of this feature. It is such a CRITICAL feature that has been PROMISED for years now. Your API is also broken for very large collections and these scripts either error out or simply never finish.
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We just bought bitwarden Enterprise and this feature would enable us to to a folder like hiracy. Insted of hopping people use a good naming for the password generated
8 Years? I am sorry…. but 8 years and still not even a vague ETA ?
That is disappointing to say the least-
i am really sorry that this is my first post and it is so negative but i cant really understand that
I kinda expected this feature to be a logical given considering bitwarden is aimed at enterprises so it is to be expected that there are thousands of passwords
And the official solution is that you have to manually select each Entry?
When you onboard a new employee that can take literal days depending on workload and allocations of permissions.