I don’t know if this is some known issue or if I need to raise this as a bug. This is on an iPhone 16, iOS 18.1.1.
I go into Bitwarden’s app and I set the following
Unlock Options - Unlock with Face ID
Session timeout - Never
Session timeout action - Log out
And for a while, things will be fine. Face ID will work for autofilling fields. And then, with no warning, Bitwarden will stop logging me into apps. Instead it will prompt me for my master password, but every time I put it in, it drops me back to the login screen and asks for the master password again.
The only way to resolve this is to come out of whatever app it is I’m trying to login to, go to Bitwarden’s settings, and re-enable Face ID after logging in with my master password.
This is intensely annoying and not a problem I ever encountered when I was using an Android phone. Why is it logging me out? Why is it not accepting the master password unless I specifically open up the Bitwarden app and log in that way?
Regarding the unwanted logout with the setting “never”, I would reference this other thread (beginning with post #4). – And there is a related PR on GitHub, that you could also follow (“subscribe” to get notifications):
When you get logged out, it is expected that also the biometric unlock method gets “resetted”.
You could consider reporting the unwanted logouts in the iOS section on GitHub: GitHub · Where software is built (I didn’t do an extensive search now, so please search for possible recent duplicates in the open and closed (!) issues first)
Also the “Why is it not accepting the master password unless I specifically open up the Bitwarden app and log in that way?”-part that @Llyander expressed should best be reported on GitHub. (–> GitHub is the place for bug reports)
ok I just set session time out to never and that seems to have fixed it. Weird that Bitwarden broke the usage of a perfectly valid authentication method.
Well, glad that I accidentally could help you somehow, but now you lost me. – OP here had the session timeout set to never, and when you wrote “This is still an issue today”, my assumption was until now that you also had a problem with the session timeout “never”.
That’s on me for not reading OP’s post fully. I took their post as that they were turning on Face ID and then leaving the settings and in a matter of minutes it turning it back off again. Which is what was happening to me. Which in my opinion defeats the purpose of me turning on Face ID in the first place. Turning on Face ID functionally should take place of the master password, no matter the session time out setting. The session time out is how soon after leaving should the app ask for your password/Face ID again. Aka I leave the app. Then next time I go back into it, it asks for my Face ID rather than saying enter master password because we have turned off the Face ID setting you the user turned on.
Actually speaking of I just went back into the Bitwarden app and Face ID was turned off again.
I want Face ID to stay on so I can use my face as the password. My master password is long so I don’t want to type it in every single time I’d rather use Face ID because that’s the point of it. Apple have it for Apple Pay security so no idea why Bitwarden is anti Face ID
I won’t pretend – I’m not an iOS expert… But standard troubleshooting here: did you already try to deinstall and reinstall the app? There are some “hiccups”, that can be resolved by this procedure.
@user369 Okay… Well, as I just wrote above, your best bet then would be to open a bug report on GitHub (“New issue”). My personal tip – though it’s not completely predictable – describe the issue in some detail. They’ll try to reproduce it, and that could be a problem (as, from what I “hear”, this doesn’t seem to be an issue for most iOS users). – Adding what you already tried and didn’t resolve it, might motivate them to look into it.
Question, previously I had my iOS app timeout set to never until some change was made where when set to timeout never your Totp codes won’t paste anymore. Can you confirm if you see that too? I’ve had to set my iOS timeout to some very long custom hours just so that Totp pasting works.
I don’t use Bitwarden for my Totp tokens. So I can’t test that.
Seems like a very strange issue though. Have a look on the GitHub issues page to see if someone else has confirmed your issue. I found the weird never timeout issue on there.
I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned it but I did do a write up on there and was told by BW that it was expected. Although I’m still pondering if there was a misunderstanding or something lost when I was attempting to explain the issue.
Even though the issue was closed, Bitwarden staff posted a comment suggesting that users still experiencing the issue should provide a Flight Recorder log:
This has happened to me a few time now over the last several months. Just happened again yesterday on my iPad. I can’t think of any reason why the Face ID toggle should switch off unless the user does it.
