Sync is NOT automatic

I know from the documentation that SYNC is supposed to be automatic. I work across Mac, Windows, and Android, and I often have to add a login vault item in one app, and then use the same login elsewhere. I have never, not once, found the new login waiting for me on a different device. It always needs a manual SYNC for it to arrive. This can even be the case on the same machine, say between the desktop app and the browser add-in. A new vault item in one NEVER immediately syncs across all apps and devices. How hard can this be? Sure a simple push notification to all instances of the software, forcing a sync as soon as any change has been. made to the vault, can’t be too hard to do?

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That could be convenient. Could also be insecure…

Imagine you keep a client running at home and say you are at work maybe. Everything is working fine until you try to login to a team chat. Somebody changed the password! You probably would have received an email about this already, but let’s assume not. Naturally, you rush to Bitwarden to check.

Now Bitwarden is just fine, they couldn’t actually change the password for it because they didn’t have your recovery method. But you can’t see the old password because that was edited and force synced to every client you have! You can get back from this by changing every account, but that first account is lost to you.


All preventable with current security options, but doesn’t hurt to be careful.

Haven’t ever had issues with Sync personally myself.
I understand this requires both the use of Websockets for browser based notifications, and push notifications for mobile.

Could you possibly be running a self-hosted service? This may account for any issues you may be experiencing with the automatic sync not working properly.
Otherwise this is definitely some curious behavior as sync should be working across all clients.

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Not running a self-hosted service.
Windows 10 (up-to-date).
Chrome v1.56.6
Firefox v1.55

Browser Chrome or Firefox BW syncing is horrible. Does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for automatic syncing . I see 1 hour, 1+ hours, 20 min, 40 min, etc. on a regular basis.

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Not running a self-hosted service, Mac and Win10, Chrome, Safri, Android, both desktop versions. Adding a new vault item in any app instance never produces an immediate automatic sync across all platforms, and always requires a manual sync to pull down the new vault item (or changes to an existing item)

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I am using Windows 11, both desktop app and Edge addon, iOS app and Android app. Sync is taking hours and causing lots of issues due to this delay.

If I change something in browser addon, I have to manually sync desktop app for example, which is not a good thing. It should be automatic and instant like other password managers.

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Hey @Naxterra, how many items are in your vault? Are you seeing the same behavior when switching networks?

I have around 600ish items in my vault. I have one shared organization which has less than 20 items. Yes, issue persists with other networks. Same with my wife’s iPhone and iPad. Even though automatic sync is active, sometimes it takes days on mobile. It is also not country specific; it happened when I was in other EU countries too.

I also deleted app several times in mobile devices, reinstalled OS several times but for months this issue persists.

Thanks for confirmation, for the team to investigate further, please create a ticket with our support team here.

I am facing a similar problem. I use Bitwarden’s cloud service (I have not self hosted anything). I use bitwarden across multiple browsers on Linux.

When I change a setting under the “Account settings / Preferences” say “Vault timeout” on Brave (on Ubuntu), the same doesn’t show up immediately on a parallel browser session running on Chrome (on the same Ubuntu machine) for several minutes.

I tried refreshing the page several times on both Brave and Chrome which prompted me to re-enter my master password on each refresh. Despite that, each one has been showing different values for “Vault timeout” for several minutes now.

Is this how it is designed & intentional or is it a bug ?

Hey @Abhinandan_Kedlaya, and welcome to the forums! Currently account settings like timeout are set per client, as many users require specific configurations per device.