There are many times that I have to check that a new password has been stored in BW. Some web pages seem to make BW detection of a new password difficult. And so I have to enter the laborious process of resetting the password and waiting for reset emails to be delivered etc.
But Iâve only discovered recently that BW has a password history function. Other forum posts have also noted the lack of awareness. I had to read the FAQ to find out that the info was buried at the bottom of a vault entry, with the only visual clue to more info being available being that a scroll bar was present. Also I had to click on the number to bring up the password history, which was also not immediately obvious.
The Password field should add a clock icon to indicate that the field has historical entries. There are other password icons present for other password functions e.g. exposure checks, visibility toggle and copy, so the context sensitive functionality is already established.
Make the âPassword Historyâ button look like a button and not just text.
See this screen recording. When I first wanted to access the password history of a login from the extension, I thought it was not possible because the âbuttonâ:
is the same color as the text around it
doesnât have a different background color
itâs just a few pixels large
is surrounded by things that look like it but arenât clickable
It was SO hidden that I opened the web vault and viewed the password history from there, thinking it couldnât be accessed using the extension. Only later I went back to the extension and realized that it was a clickable button.
ă ¤Challenge: Find the clickable button in the web vault
The problem not only occurs on the extension, but also on the web vault. The button should not look like text and put in such a hidden spot. Can you consider adding it to the other buttons, like the âDelete itemâ button on the web vault and the âMove to organizationâ button on the extension.
Password History is an amazing feature, so I donât think it should be more hidden than other buttons that Iâve never even used once such as âMove to organizationâ.
OMG! I had no clue it was even clickable until today! Longtime Bitwarden user and Iâve literally told people: âthe only problem with Bitwarden is that you canât actually see old passwordsâ
Now that I know, I donât care too much about this issue, but the Bitwarden team should care. It would certainly make the product much better!
I just came here to request this feature because Iâve used BW for at least 4 years and only just discovered that it did this.
A tiny, clickable text number without even a font colour change is just bad UI design. Itâs what youâd do if you were trying to hide the feature. The app has a standard for buttons, this feature should be consistent with that.
And password history should be placed with the password itself, not with a bunch of timestamps. If Iâm looking for an (old) password, Iâm going to look around the password field, not at the timestamps down the very bottom.
Likewise, View (menu) > Password history should be shown in the main interface. Either listed below All items and Favourites in the left subwindow on the desktop app, or as a third tab alongside My vault and Send at the bottom of that subwindow.
Lastly, calling the menu item and the button within an individual entry both âPassword historyâ when they provide different things is confusing. Iâd suggest the item in the View menu be called something like âRecently generated passwordsâ.
Adding in my vote. Having the visibility to the historical passwords is super helpful for my enterprise use case as we document local hardware passwords which could cache on some devices.
This really needs to be clearer in some way - also when password start with nueric digit itâs difficult to select in webapp to be able to copy-paste it
having a password history is crucial - having 90% of people using the tool not knowing this exists and not finding it when looking as itâs so hiden is not great
I only found it by googling for a solution and by some forum showing the exact place where I needed to click âŚ
I had used Bitwarden in the past for some testing in my homelab but have avoided moving my main password vault as I didnât think this feature existed.
I created a forum account just so I could vote for this feature. Please make it more clear that you can view historical passwords for a specific entry for both the app and all the browser plugins.
+1 for all the suggestions for improvement on this impossible to find feature, even after you find out that it actually exists.
As a former UI designer, I find it hard to believe that this feature design passed any UI review worth its salt.
Please improve on this so badly needed feature.
Since this is a Feature Request thread, and since you are a former UI designer, perhaps you can offer a concrete proposal for how to improve the visibility of the password history.
Since the number of past passwords is a link, it should appear as a link. So either make it show up in underlined blue, as any link would, or make it button with the text being either âShow old passwordsâ, or the number of old password itself. These two options have already been suggested by others and they make sense. I am just repeating it here since you asked.
What is interesting is that you can only see the past passwords while viewing an entry. You canât view them while you are editing the entry. I wonder why not. It would add to the usability to display the password history even when editing. Hope this helps.
As indicated in my screenshots above, the number of past passwords is no longer a link (in fact, the number is no longer shown) in the new UI (available in the browser extension and Web Vault, not yet in the Desktop app).
The new UI has the link in boldface blue instead of underlined blue, so perhaps underlining would make it more identifiable as a link. I agree that an icon would be helpful, and perhaps styling the whole thing in the manner of a button would be helpful as well.
Any news on when the Desktop app will be updated to match the browser/Web vault UI?
I would also like to echo what Pierre said, too, regarding the fact that being able to see old passwords while editing an entry would be super-helpful. The use-case I can think of is that it would be good to double-check and make sure that while editing an entry, you are not creating a new password thatâs too similar to older passwords.
