Bitwarden is fantastic. However, not being able to sync settings across devices is quite time-consuming. Specifically for the “Default URI Match Detection” which is set to “Base Domain”, this means that it matches both http://example.com and https://example.com. AFAIK, while the latter is secure, the former is not. So, no one should be transmitting their password over HTTP. So, I prefer to set my default to “Starts with” but currently I have to do it on every device or set it on every entry because entries are synced.
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It would be nice if the addon settings could be sincronized between browsers, so we could have the same settings in all of them.
For password generator or the security settings it would be interesting
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There are multiple ways to use the vault, various browser extensions and programs/apps on various operating systems, all in all an impressive amount of which i use quite a few.
Each extension/app offers an extensive list of options which i have to set individually. For many options i do not feel the need to divert from a choosen option and it would be handy to sync these options, just as the vault itself is synced.
Request:
- would it be possible to (optionally) sync options?
- If (some) options are already synced, can these be documented?
Options/setting which could be synced are possibly:
- all password generator options
- all options
- settings lock options
(maybe this has been requested before, not sure, see: Customizable standard settings for the password generator)
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I work on multiple OS such as Ubuntu and Windows11
I also use multiple browsers depending on the current task, Chrome, Brave, Opera, Firefox
I login on different machines
There is no universal setting on Bitwarden that allows for “never” timeout on login.
The custom setting ALWAYS defaults to 15 minutes and has to be changed to desired setting each and every time. I hate this. I would like to see a setting that can be saved so that it works on ANY OS, ANY browser, ANY machine. Thank you.
The Bitwarden web vault has several preferences. For example, whether or not to display site favicons, and whether to use a dark/light/system theme.
Currently, those preferences are not saved with the user’s account (or it’s broken). I’m guessing they are stored in a cookie or another form of transient storage.
Can the user’s web vault preferences please be saved as a few bytes of data in the user’s profile? That way, all those settings do not have to be configured and customized every time the user logs in. More and more people clear cookies regularly, so cookies and other types of transient browser storage are not an effective and reliable way to store such settings.
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Hello - I had earlier made a bunch of setting changes (setting it to immediately lock, enabling biometric lock etc) to the Android Bitwarden app.
As part of debugging a separate issue going on with Bitwarden, I uninstalled and reinstalled the app.
All of the settings went back to default on reinstall.
Can you make sure to store the settings in the cloud, so that they are retained on reinstall + relogin?
Thanks!
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The complication with storing in the cloud is that I want different settings on my mobile phone vs my desktop at work vs my desktop at home.
Export/Import settings would be a welcome addition, but I would rather they not be synced between my clients.
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That’s interesting. I’m curious, what’s your use case for wanting different settings and which ones are different?
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Primarily the vault timeout.
My phone, could easily be stolen/lost, so it has a very short lock timeout.
My home PC is behind locked doors, so I am ok with leaving it unlocked for much longer.
My work PC had “pin unlock” (unlike the others) before I got a hello-compatible camera. Now, the lock timeout is somewhere between that for the phone and home.
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I’m using 5 Chrome profiles for different clients. Each profile I need to change my settings for autofill and timeout. This should be synced! (I’ve been using Bitwarden since 2018 and struggled with this since the beginning.)
Please fix!
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I have a bit of mixed feelings about this topic.
In general, I do like the idea of (some) synced settings for Bitwarden.
As the topic-title speaks of the examples locking time or PIN, those would be settings, I wouldn’t like to have synced myself.
As I see it, there are mainly five categories of settings that could be synced (based on the browser extension):
- “Account security”: Unlock options (biometrics, PIN)
- “Account security”: Vault timeout (timeout, timeout action: locking/logout)
- Autofill settings
- Notifications (including Excluded domains)
- Appearance
→ Unlock options may be very different on desktop (I use PIN there, mostly), laptop (I use mainly biometrics) or on mobile devices…
→ Vault timeout may be different on stationary devices v. on mobile devices (for security reasons, on mobile devices I just recently changed to very short timeouts - 1-2 minutes - paranoia regarding device theft 
)
→ Autofill settings could be synced (at least on desktop devices - mobile apps have different conditions for autofill with Android and iOS)… though, when someone has different usecases or “profile” - e.g. with different browser for work and private - I can imagine using different options would also be applied
→ Notifications: maybe similar argument as for “autofill settings” → could be synced, as long as you have everywhere the same usecase…
→ Appearance: same argument as before… already for “consistency”, I personally would prefer the same settings everywhere - but I’m not sure, if others would like to have differences in appearance, depending on the usecase (and: on a large screen, “extra wide” is nice - on a small laptop screen: maybe not…)
So, again, in general, I would like a “sync option”. - But if everything was synced automatically, I think I wouldn’t be happy either. - And to make every option “optionally synced” doesn’t sound like a very easy solution either. 
(and as changing the settings only costs a minute - and is only done when (re-)installing an app, I can live without a “settings sync” for now…)
PS: As @grb mentioned the generator here, I want to add it for completeness… Yeah, the generator settings (including alias APIs) could really be synced also. - Though, there’s also a separate feature request for that: Sync password generator settings
@Nail1684, WikiMedia provides the most versatile example of how to handle preference synchronisation across (in implementation, federated) storages. In this case, the preferences are federated from the server to the client storage, whereupon the client decides which to override:
No need to hardcode what is possible to synchronise.
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@rokejulianlockhart Thanks! And that concept is not completely unfamiliar… The question is (at least for me), if that would be any easier than no sync at all.
PS: Yeah, one big advantage would be: you could always get the “synced option”, if you wanted…
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@Nail1684, if the GUI includes a “Select options below to be global” (multi-select / select all) option, then it should be fairly trivial for those who either like having nothing or all synchronised (which is most users, I’d presume).
The others, despite having a more complex UI to contend with, would at least be afforded the ability to choose exactly what they want to synchronise.
If it works in WikiMedia and most default file managers (Windows Explorer and KDE Dolphin), I think we’re unnecessarily underestimating the average user’s intelligence, if we consider it to be too complex.
Just to that point: that wasn’t what I intended to say. – Maybe I’m too complicated myself in that regard but I just saw the practical side of it: making every setting manually - or checking every setting manually (synced/not-synced variant), my calculation would be that both cost about the same time and effort in the end. 
My frustration is it also often seems to happen with there’s a silent upgrade too, not just when the user uninstalls/reinstalls - in particular I find that every so often after an automatic update I have to go in and reset my vault lock options, etc. I’d be happy with some sort of manual option - ‘save current settings to vault’ that I could then use on another browser. I work across multiple machines and browsers so do find it a bit of a pain having to keep making the same settings changes.
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An alternative approach would be to implement a tool for exporting and importing client preferences and settings (perhaps also including password generator settings), allowing settings to be transferred to new installations or restored to an existing installation.
I’ve looked to see if there is a separate feature request for this, but have not been able to find one — which is surprising.
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Also a good idea. Though, then you would have a file to export, copy to the other devices, update the file when you change some settings, check when you use it that it really is the “newest” file version and not an older one… and a sync with the Bitwarden account/server sounds more secure than exporting and importing additional files (that could be tampered with in the meantime - and if we don’t trust the Bitwarden server in general, then we should abandon the vault immediately).
(PS: “additional files” in the sense of “not only vault exports” and imports if necessary)
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Yes, the use-case would be somewhat different, but overlapping. Some users would prefer a true sync to keep all settings always the same across all devices and installations. For others, this is more of an infrequently encountered inconvenience, when commissioning new devices (or after settings have been altered by an update or reinstallation); and it would be more flexible, as it would allow a choice from among multiple options when importing preferences to a new device or client app.
@grb, I don’t think that your suggestion should be an alternative. Rather, I think it has use regardless, because, as you’ve since stated, it allows a user to image multiple accounts that the internal synchronisation server necessarily cannot service.
You should submit it as a separate FR.
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