So many clicks compared to Roboform...am I missing something?

Ask the Community Password Manager
1

Moved from Roboform (local version , not Everywhere) and although I like BW more, it seems to require a lot of effort to get into a site I didn’t experience with RF. By my count, BW goes like this:

  1. Click to open browser extension
  2. Click to move from Tab view to Vault view
  3. (if not marked as a favorite which many aren’t) scroll to folder where you recall the logon to be)
  4. Click on logon entry
  5. Click on launch icon
  6. Click to fill logon and password fields
  7. Click on Log In button for site

Thats a lot of steps. With Robofom there is an Internet Explorer-like list the immediately comes up when you click the icon in Systray or browser extension. Your top 10 most visited and ALL your folders are immediately visible (no scrolling). Whats it boils down to is you can get into a site with Roboform with as few as two clicks to open the menu and single click your way to site/autofill/go in.

BW seems to take so much longer. As much as I want to leave RF in favor of a cloud-based open source option that syncs across devices, it seems the process could be made much shorter.

I suspect this has been suggested as a feature to add but repeating here seems worthwhile.

1 Like
2

Why don’t you store the corresponding URIs in the individual records? This way all matching records will show up on the Tab view automatically. Additionally you can trigger autofill with ctrl+shift+L

4 Likes
3

I have over 230 logons (URL’s) . Will this just put all of them there and I’d have to scroll and scroll?

4

I’m at about 240 currently. ^^
And no, only those will be shown, where the stored URL matches the currently opened site. So in most cases only a single entry will be shown and that’s the one that will be used for autofill, too.

5

Let me take a step back - exactly what does “Why don’t you store the corresponding URLs in the individual records?” mean? do I have to move all my logons?

6

No, just add the URI for wich your stored logon should be used. This way bitwarden can offer it to you every time you visit that website.

https://help.bitwarden.com/article/uri-match-detection/

7

Upon reading this I’m not sure I see how it will drastically reduce keystrokes (clicks) to log in from a cold start.

8

If there is only one saved logon, wich URI matches the currenly visited site, you can simply press ctrl+shit+L and bitwarten autofills that information to the login-form. In the options you could also configure automatic autofill, so bitwarden will fill in your credentials automatically.

9

OK, but doesn’t that just eliminate step 6 in my original post?

10

I eliminates all your steps and replaces them with a single key-combination.
Or if you don’t want to use the autofill (or have more then one logon for the given site) it would still eliminate steps 2,3,4 and 5.

11

Yeah, you just need to add the URL to the logins and then you’ll just have one step to do. This video shows it in action.

1 Like
12

@Blue_Sky_58
How are you liking BW? I have been using RF for YEARS so I’m hesitant to make the switch. I would like to get some real-world feedback from users that really know RF and BW before I spend countless hours trying to get BW to work in a Windows VM, in my home lab.

13

The main reasons for me jumping ship were continued games with pricing and that I didn’t trust RF Everywhere (and really wanted a cloud solution because i got tired of updating separate machines every time something changed.). I have had no issues with BW so far. The user interface is fine and I have it configured so it autofills on many (not all) sites. A few sites require me to copy/paste the password but I think thats an issue with what the site accepts, not BW.

Once you get the BW add-on installed in Chrome or Firefox, it works pretty similar to RF in terms of number of clicks. I’d prefer if “My Vault” were the first screen that comes up in the browser interface (not Tab), so a little more user configuration control in Settings I guess is what I want. It lacks a dedicated Notes option (you can add a note to a logon but not a freestanding note) and I did use that a lot in RF, so a protected Note option would be a good enhancement.

BTW - the one or two times I sought support for BW, I got prompt responses and good follow up. RF is just OK in this area based on my ind. experience. So far, I have had no issues using it and do not feel compelled to go back to RF. Hope this helps.

14

Thanks so much for the response. I feel the same way about RF and I never used their sync, either.

I guess I’ll try to install BW (fingers crossed).

15

I agree…password managers are the ultimate tool for simplicity…the fewer the clicks the better.

16

So many clicks compared to Roboform…am I missing something?

No, you are not missing anything. RF has spoiled us with ease of use and robustness.

Over the past week, I’ve spent most of my time researching, installing and testing self-hosted Bitwarden (BW). After installing BW server numerous times in both Windows and Linux VM’s that I spun up in VMWare Workstation, I finally decided to “go for it”. I created a new Linux VM on my vSphere server (just for BW) and imported my hundreds of logins from Roboform (RF).

Adjusting to the switch from RF to the BW client on Windows is not too painful but Android is a different story. With RF, I could create shortcuts on my phone’s home screen for commonly used logins. To use them, all I had to do was touch the shortcut icon, scan my fingerprint and the webpage would open with the fields populated, every time. Or I could open the RF app, scan my fingerprint and search for or select a login from the list (which displays instantly unlike BW) and have it open the webpage with the login fields auto-filled, every time.

With BW, I have to create/save a Firefox bookmark of a login page to the phone’s home screen. Once I touch the Firefox shortcut, the webpage opens but the fields remain empty. I have both Autofill and Accessibility enabled so that should be all that is required. Now I have a couple of choices on how to proceed. I can touch the password field in the webpage and see the autofill pop-up flash on the screen for a millisecond. It does not stay on the screen long enough to touch it. It does this disappearing act about 85% of the time. If it does stay on screen long enough for me to touch it, I am prompted to scan my fingerprint so BW can be unlocked. Once BW opens, I have to scroll through all of the logins that match the same base domain name. No matter what I have set for global URI match, it displays a list of all logins that have the same base domain name. When I finally find the correct login and touch it, I am taken back to the webpage but 50% of the time, no login fields are filled in. The next thing I can do is pull down the BW notification at the top of the screen and search for the login and touch it. I then get an option to view the item or autofill. Autofill works, this time. It would have been quicker to forgo BW and just enter the credentials manually.

Since the above method is a crapshoot and such a waste of time, I figured I’d remove the shortcuts to my commonly used logins from my home screen and use the BW add-on in Firefox, instead. My thought was to just open Firefox and use the BW add-on as a replacement for Firefox’s bookmarks menu. So I open Firefox, scroll down and touch the Bitwarden add-on link and then I am prompted to enter my PIN (no option for fingerprint scan). Now the Autofill pop-up is in my way! Now it wants to stay on the screen! After entering my PIN, I have to wait several seconds for BW to populate. Now I have to either search for my login or touch the ‘My Vault’ icon to list all of my logins and scroll through the list. If I go the search route, I get to enter two characters in the search box before the keypad disappears because the list is being populated. I have to touch the search box again to make the keypad display so I can enter more characters. This is very annoying. Once I find my login, I have to select ‘launch’ so the webpage is opened. About 20% of the time the fields do not autofill.

The phone that I have used for most of my testing is a mint condition Google Pixel XL with Android Pie. RF has worked perfectly on this phone as well as autofill for any other app. I did remove RF so these issues are not caused by RF/BW conflicts. Also, the BW app has crashed a couple of times and my phone mysteriously rebooted itself, once, when it wasn’t being used. This NEVER happened until I installed BW.

I haven’t given up on BW, yet, but another detractor is the fact that you cannot edit or create and save new logins, remotely, unless you allow Internet access to the BW server. The main reason for me wanting to switch to BW is to eliminate cloud storage and syncing over the Internet. You can (and I do) use a VPN but I cannot add my VPN to company owned equipment and I cannot use a VPN at some secured locations. So BW will often be read-only for me. Learning this AFTER all of the countless hours of testing was a huge disappointment. This is not an issue for RF. You can edit or create and save new logins while offline and sync the changes later. I was shocked to learn BW does not offer this functionality.

My intent is not to bash BW. I just want it to work as designed. Not being able to write while offline is not a deal breaker but the autofill issue is. Also, why do I have to unlock BW twice? Once in the app with a fingerprint scan and once in the Firefox add-on with a PIN. Can’t they be linked so one unlocks the other?

If anyone has any ideas about the autofill issues or if you have experienced the same things, please share with us :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
17

Thank you for posting this, I did not know the global hotkey.