Updated BitWarden has some serious flaws. What's being done?

It appears so - but to be clear, the legacy extension won’t be able to use Biometrics as far as I understand.

That makes sense since current Safari extension doesn’t support biometrics and the legacy extension is probably not going to get any new features.

Adding these features may also be easier via Web Extension.

It is just better for multi-browser users. The current workaround is to install 2 copies of the desktop app (one from MAS to get biometrics, another from DMG), which probably isn’t great.

I can’t get the extension to appear in Safari at all with the older version. It’s not in the preferences as an option. So using the older version does not appear to work at all for Safari. In other words, Bitwarden can’t be used in Safari right now in any way, as far as I can tell.

I just tried uninstalling MAS version & downloaded a copy of 1.24.7.
I am able to enable it in Safari 14.0.3 as shown by following screenshot.
Device is M1 MacBook running Big Sur 11.2.3

Ah, I had installed 1.24.6. Yes, 7 works! I guess the only thing is that you can’t use your fingerprint to open the Safari extension, but that’s not a big problem given that everything else works.

And I suppose if I install this on my iMac, where there are no biometrics anyway, then I get the features I liked before as well without any downside, right?