For a few months now, the DuckDuckGo Browser for Desktop offers native BitWarden integration that works with the BitWarden Desktop app. At first sight, it looks fantastic. However, upon really trying it out, sadly there are many flaws – some of which must be bugs.
I’m aware it’s a fairly new feature, and issues may not even be BW’s responsibility, but rather be due to delays on DDG’s end – after all the DDG Browser is still in “beta” – so obviously we shouldn’t expect a perfect product. But, since I haven’t found any place where these things are being discussed here’s a (non-exhaustive) list … anyone who is super excited about the DDG-BW collaboration but also frustrated at things not working … you’re not alone and please add your own observations.
Also suggestions would be nice where best to raise these issues with people who are more deeply involved with these projects – would it make sense to create a ticket/tickets on GitHub? … BW or DDG?
So here are the main issues from what I could observe:
(1)
The BitWarden browser extensions for other browsers have a dedicated settings tab where one can select, for example, different Auto-fill configurations, allow unlock with biometrics, etc. But nowhere can I seem to find these settings on the DuckDuckGo Browser – and aside from activating DDG integration in the BW Desktop app prefs there don’t seem to be any other options that control DDG behavior.
(2)
When updating a password on a website that has three fields:
– Current password
– New password
– Repeat new password
or equivalent fields, BitWarden for DuckDuckGo fills all three fields with newly generated passwords instead of offering the present password for the first field and generated passwords for the others.
(3)
When I am editing passwords in the DDG Browser for Desktop, being logged on to vault.bitwarden.com in a browser window, every time I edit a field for a BitWarden entry, BitWarden asks me via pop up in the top right corner if I want to update the password for vault.bitwarden.com (i.e., the master password), which I obviously don’t want to.
(4)
One of the things that is nice about the DuckDuckGo Browser integration as opposed to the Browser extension in other browsers, is the immediate appearance of the dropdown menu for auto-fill when clicking on a field on any website. However, the prompt shows only the “username” field. Other Browser extensions show both, “name” field and “username” field. It would be nice if this would be the case on DDG too to disambiguate entries for different subdomains of the same website that may use the same username/email, as has been discussed here:
(5)
On many websites, including the very
vault.bitwarden.com
when being prompted to log in again (such as after a reload/refresh) when there is no field for username to be filled, Bitwarden for DuckDuckGo suggest a generated password instead of offering saved ones.
… and fwiw, since we’re at it, two would-be-nice-to-have-s:
(6)
When being prompted to save a newly generated password to BitWarden, it would be nice to have the option not only to edit/add a username, but also to edit the name or to modify the URI or add a secondary one.
(7)
When being prompted to save a newly generated password to BitWarden, it would be nice to have the option to not create a new one but also to “merge with” or “add to” an existing entry.