TLDR
Bitwarden organisations are a paid feature, and you pay per member of the organisation. This model works in many situations, but it doesn’t work for WiFi passwords. This is a shame because people tend to share WiFi passwords more often than they share any other type of password.
I propose that all users (or at least all premium users) are given a free “WiFi organisation” just for sharing WiFi passwords.
Why are WiFi passwords special?
WiFi password sharing has the potential to become a killer feature for Bitwarden.
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Everybody joins new WiFi networks all the time
- E.g. at home, at a cafe, visiting a friend, staying at a hotel, etc.
- If you reset your device or buy a new one then you have to rejoin the network.
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Everybody on the network uses the same password
- You probably share your WiFi password with more people than you share your Netflix password, or any other password for that matter!
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Entering WiFi passwords is a huge pain
- The default passwords on modern routers tend to be long and complicated (or they should be!).
- You have to enter the same password on every device you own.
- If you dual-boot your device, or have multiple user accounts, then you need to enter the password on each operating system / user account.
- If you are travelling in a group then everybody else has to do the same too.
- If the password changes (which it should, periodically) then you have to do it all over again.
Individual platforms will try to solve the WiFi password problem for their users, but only a cross-platform product like Bitwarden can solve it for everybody.
Why not share WiFi passwords via regular Bitwarden organisations?
If I am already in an organisation with somebody then great, let’s add our WiFi passwords to the organisation! However, if we are not already in an organisation together then we would not pay to create one just for the sake of sharing our WiFi passwords. As annoying as it is to enter WiFi passwords manually, you don’t have to do it every time you connect to the network.
I give my WiFi password to everybody who visits my house, but I don’t share any other passwords with most of those people. Organisations are billed per-member, so the more people join, the more you pay; it’s not worth it just for one password. We share WiFi passwords with more people than we share any other password, yet it is not viable to share them via Bitwarden’s sharing feature!
How would a WiFi organisation work?
They would work just like regular organisations, except:
- Each user can only create one WiFi organisation (but can join an unlimited number).
- WiFi organisations are free, or billed per-password rather than per-user.
- WiFi organisations can only be used for WiFi passwords.
How would you identify WiFi passwords?
There would be a new type of vault item called a “Wi-Fi login”. This is like a normal login but the URIs are pre-filled (e.g. androidapp://com.android.settings) and cannot be changed. This ensures that WiFi logins cannot be conviently used to store anything other than WiFi passwords (you could store any password, but it wouldn’t autofill anywhere except the WiFi settings dialog).
What if this undermines regular organisations?
If necessary, the single WiFi organisation could be limited to containing only a single WiFi login. Most people only have one WiFi password, so this is a reasonable compromise. It means:
- I can give any number of users access to my WiFi password.
- Any number of users can give me access to their WiFi password.
- If I want to share more than one password with any user then I have to create a regular organisation with that user.