@richb-hanover I have moved your comments about fixing the nonpersistent UI state into the existing feature request thread, so that the beta feedback thread about the new extension UI can stay focused on UI design matters. You did receive a response from Bitwarden there, indicating that work towards a persistent UI for the extension is currently in progress:
In the meantime, the new pop-out buttons on the Edit screen should help mitigate the issue.
@grb, @dflinn, @DenBesten, @Kevin_Harris, @Nail1684
Folks, I wish to apologize in advance for the next sentence, but it feels to me as if my suggestion is being pigeonholed into the silo of “We’ve had this report a million times” and not examined anew.
I WANT TO PROPOSE A NOVEL SOLUTION TO THE NONPERSISTENT UI PROBLEM (sorry for shouting)
Unless I am completely mistaken (and I would welcome a correction if I am wrong), Bitwarden already has all the UI components and machinery to solve what I perceive as the nonpersistent UI problem.
My Proposal: Whenever someone wants to add/edit a record, Bitwarden should immediately pop out the extension window. Once popped out, Bitwarden can work exactly as it already does.
The Bitwarden window has its own identity in the browser’s Windows menu (works today)
People can rummage around, click elsewhere, and ultimately come back to the popped-out Bitwarden window (works today)
Bitwarden can refuse to let the window close until they have used either Save or Cancel for the changes (works today)
The ONLY change is tying a click on Add or Edit to pop out the window. No further change to Bitwarden is required. This seems to solve the problems of:
Losing typing when clicking to another window (Bitwarden won’t close until they choose Save/Cancel)
Losing typing when popping out the window (it’s already popped out)
Whether to have the popout icon in other windows (any change should pop it out)
And now I request forgiveness - I expect that there is some deep reason that this won’t work. But it sure seems to solve my problem, and I would like to know why it wouldn’t work more broadly (or perhaps a link to that discussion.)
Thank you for listening.
I find that an interesting idea. Obviously I didn’t think too long about it, but two remarks that came to my mind instantly:
I would guess that if new item creation were implemented in the way that you propose, then Bitwarden would no longer be able to automatically populate the Name and URI1 fields with information from the active browser tab URL. The browser extension has permission to read this information from your browser, but the pop-out window is a completely independent browser instance, and would not have permission to read information from the parent browser. There may be some way to circumvent this limitation, but it doesn’t seem that it would be any easier than the approach described in @dflinn’s comment from the other thread.
The answer is from the future, in 3 years. Try to use SideBar , link for (Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, but not Edge)
(enough …/index.html)
@grb, @dflinn, @DenBesten, @Kevin_Harris, @Nail1684
I apologize for my earlier naivety - I thought I had discovered America by coming up with a “novel fix” to the Bitwarden data loss problem that plagues me. To learn more about it (and to guard against the likelihood that I was just missing the point entirely), I decided to review the history of this issue.
I now find myself incredibly frustrated by the slow response surrounding this request. Here is what I see:
What I have not found are a clear answers to the following questions:
There are vague assurances that “we need to find a way to save data temporarily…” What makes this such a hard problem? What cases need to be avoided/prevented?
Why wouldn’t popping out the window when there are changes/edits solve those problems?
If the team judges that this bug cannot be addressed as part of the new browser extension beta, then when will it be fixed?
I would really appreciate a response from a team member who knows the answers to these questions. Thanks.
PS to @grb You have always been helpful in your responses to me in the past. I also understand that you are working to minimize distractions in the new Beta-test UI discussion. I mean no disrespect to any members of the team, but…
If the UI allows / permits a newcomer to lose data frequently, then I believe it belongs front and center in the beta-test user interface discussion. I would ask that this remain in the Browser Extension Refresh topic. Thank you again
It is in fact the very first piece of feedback in the beta-test user interface discussion, captured in a direct response with positive feedback by Bitwarden’s senior product designer, including both short-term and long-term plans.
This is more substantial attention than any other piece of feedback. I don’t feel there is much risk of your feedback being lost now that when @grb appropriately moved your post (#36) to the feature request intended for further discussion.
@DenBesten Thank you for your reassurance. I will look for the responses to my three questions in the other topic.
Credit where credit is due. Your “NOVEL” solution was proposed in what is now this thread almost exactly 4 years prior:
That is, unless it is just the change to the “edit” button that you consider novel, in which case, I guess we could call it a novella solution 
.
Hi everyone, i see that bitwarden team its no’t implement this feautre yet! But you could work around it, by set “the sesstion timeout” -to 1 minute/Or higher,
My english no’t good su I hope this is helpful.
@Xw3 Hi!
I guess the problem this feature request addresses is not solvable by setting the session timeout like this. One of the main problems is that one can experience data loss while an app is unlocked.
@Nail1684 Thanks for the reply, I see that it doesn’t solve the problem in general, but it might solve the data loss issue at least for “mobile users”. See here: Watch Tset video | Streamable
Thanks again
I just tested the current (non-beta) extension, and when I add a login using the autofill/context menu (as mentioned here), it opens the add login page in a separate (pop-out) window with the URI populated. So the technology is in place.
Side Note: The name was blank. Not sure why the name doesn’t populate when the URI does. Especially since the name usually defaults to the host portion of the URI.
Agreed, an option to add/edit in a persistent (pop-out) window or not (current behavior) would make a smoother transition for users rather forcing the change for all existing users. (Though my personal preference for new installations would be the persistent by default option.)
While technically true, having a pop-out button is not the goal of this feature request or it’d have been closed years ago.
I am (and @richb-hanover probably is) just excited that recent improvements could make it possible, by default and with minimal effort, to leave Bitwarden without loosing unsaved changes if existing features (add/edit in a pop-out that closes on save) could be set as default (instead of needing to click a button.) I realize this wouldn’t perfectly maintain unsaved data in all cases, but it would satisfy most of the scenarios where I’ve personally lost unsaved changes.
I don’t expect Bitwarden to maintained unsaved data through an OS crash (though that would be nice as long as unsaved data is encrypted.) It’s not uncommon to lose unsaved data in an OS crash. However, few applications discard all your changes, without prompting, when you click outside them to view another tab/window/program.
I had a different idea while writing the following sarcastic sentence: “For some reason Bitwarden doesn’t automatically click the pop-out button for me when I forget to click it” The thought is what if Bitwarden generally functioned the same (not using pop-out mode) but if you click outside the extension with unsaved changes, Bitwarden automatically switched to pop-out mode (as if I had clicked the button) retaining unsaved changes. That’s assuming the rumor is true that the beta extension provides a pop-out button on the edit page and using it retains saved changes. I haven’t personally confirmed that rumor is true.
There are two relevant features in the new UI, but both are a work-in-progress, and do not work that effectively in the current implementation:
Persistent UI: The browser extension now opens to the previously used screen after closing and re-opening the extension popup (i.e., the “regular” popup window, not the floating pop-out). Unfortunately, this does not work for the most important use-case: when creating or editing a vault item, all work (new or modified information) is lost if the browser extension is closed and re-opened. Furthermore, the view shown in the browser extension is only remembered if one does not switch the active tab in the browser; it does not persist if one switches to a different browser tab before reopening the extension (this always opens to the default “Vault” view). Moreover, even if staying on the same browser tab, the UI does not remember the state of the filters, nor does it retain the scrollbar position, field focus, or any search terms that may have been entered into the search bar.
Pop-Out Button: The browser extension now has a pop-out button on (almost) every page. The exceptions that I could find are the screens for creating a new Send or editing a Send, as well as the modal dialogs for creating/editing folders, and for displaying the extension version information (“About”). Unfortunately, most of the limitations described above also affect the pop-out window. When creating or editing a vault item, all unsaved work (new or modified information) is lost when the pop-out button is clicked (the only exception being that the auto-populated Name field and URI field for new login items are transferred to the pop-out window). Furthermore, pop-out window does not remember the state of the filters, nor does it retain the scrollbar position, field focus, or any search terms that may have been entered into the search bar.
Ended up checking back in on this topic a year later. I’m preparing to fully move over from LastPass. whatever damage was done from the LastPass fiasco is done and probably moving away from it is incidental but I guess I’m going to consolidate on Bitwarden. It’s been my go to for all new stuff. The issue with losing data on losing focus has been and is critical to me since I’m migrating by hand from LastPass - checking each log in and deciding even if I need the account anymore. Not to mention the issue of adding extra fields and filling in Notes.
I’m glad to have found the pop-out and sidebar options as when I use the browser these solve my data loss problem. The standalone app is also an option.
Thanks glad to see there’s healthy discussion and some progress.
we are coming up 7 years on this issue. Hope it gets resolved soon.
I’ve encountered this situation a few times already (in only a month of using BitWarden):
I’m in the midst of creating or editing an item, and I pause to do something else for a few minutes. When I come back to BW, it has automatically logged me out as it should per my settings. However, when I log back in, any changes that I was in the midst of making are gone because they were not saved prior to the log out.
So the feature I’d like to see is for BW to automatically save any items that were open for editing, prior to logging out at my set time out.
Just had this happen to me. Hardly a fun situation.
It would be a good idea, I think.