This applies to the MacOS Desktop App, and perhaps the other desktop apps with biometrics.
Currently the settings flag “Ask for Touch ID on app start” is poorly defined: some maintainers expect it to activate whenever a user logs back in, and some maintainers expect it to activate only when the app initially starts.
This has some confusing effects:
- Touch ID is sometimes not prompted on system unlock, even if timeout has occurred since then, which some users might expect the flag to do.
- since Touch ID is not prompted for when started to the background, and this caveat is not explained to the user, the user who has enabled this flag is then confused when they attempt to bring the app to the foreground and are not then prompted for Touch ID.
There are also some bugs associated (see linked issues below) with the current implementation, multiple of which have been closed by different maintainers according to aforementioned contradicting interpretations of this flag.
To make this UX better, and reduce user/developer friction, this flag should be changed to “Prompt for Touch ID when activated”. The program behavior should be correspondingly modified so that whenever the app comes into focus in the foreground (either due to app start or user interaction), the Touch ID prompt should automatically appear if the app is in a locked state, satisfying both classes of user interests, and preventing issues such as those linked below.
Corresponds to Touch ID popup incorrectly appearing after Vault timeout / lock · Issue #8640 · bitwarden/clients · GitHub and "Ask for Touch ID on launch" not working when "Start to menu bar" is enabled on macOS · Issue #10201 · bitwarden/clients · GitHub