Run into what seems like yet another bug that’s causing me a headache, but potentially clients as well. Biometric (Windows Hello) authentication has just straight up stopped working for me. I can sign into my laptop with Windows Hello as normal, but Bitwarden stopped prompting me for it.
I decided to start the process over again so here’s what I’ve done:
- Disable Windows Hello in extension and desktop app (downloaded app, not from Windows Store).
- Enable in desktop app. Before, when I would enable it, it would prompt me to authenticate with it right away. It doesn’t now.
- Try to enable it in browser extension. It says it’s waiting for confirmation in the desktop app, but the desktop app never asks for it.
I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling both the extension and desktop app and it didn’t help. I also tried going to the Windows Store desktop app as well for kicks and I got the same behaviour, except the extension immediately errors out after saying it’s waiting for for the desktop app. Since the Windows Store version isn’t supposed to support biometrics, it used to just not be an option you could enable in that version, but now you can for some reason and it never says “This won’t work, use the direct download version.”
Feeling like this happened after the latest major update, which wouldn’t surprise me as every major update seems to break things now. But I wanted to see if anyone else ran into this and if so, if they were able to fix it because I know we’re going to get calls from clients soon if this is a widespread issue.
Bitwarden QA strikes again.
@PXAbstraction Could you add some details?
Windows 10 or 11? Up-to-date?
Which desktop app version?
Which browser extension version? (and which browser?)
I can confirm that. I just activated biometric unlock in my desktop app and it doesn’t ask directly for biometrics. So that is normal. – But if you lock your vault and want to unlock it (and don’t close the desktop app!) it was possible for me to unlock with Windows Hello then.
From my own experience, I would even close the desktop app now entirely, and open it again, before proceeding with the browser extension… but as long as it doesn’t work for you in the desktop app again, we can leave the extension aside for the moment…
Did you make sure that the local storage of the respective app was deleted between deinstall and reinstall?
Windows 11 24H2 with latest updates (except 25H2 obviously). Running the latest desktop and browser extensions at time of writing. Using Chrome as browser.
I have Unlock with Windows Hello enabled in the desktop app. You are correct in fact that if I lock the vault and unlock it, I have the option to use Windows Hello. If I close the app and restart it, Unlock with Windows Hello is grayed out. This didn’t used to be the behaviour. Before, Windows Hello was an option at app restart and I believe it would even just use it by default, so you’d open the app and it would just bring up the Windows Hello prompt. If this is now expected behaviour, that’s something that really needs to be made clear because a lot of my clients would be like “This is broken now.” It also renders offering Windows Hello support a lot less useful.
So as for the extension issues, I’m at a loss to explain why, but I just uninstalled and reinstalled the extension again and for some reason, this time the prompts in the desktop app are working. Maybe Chrome updated when I closed it and that whacked something back in place? Bloody weird that. So the second problem seems to be solved, but the desktop app still is only prompting for Windows Hello after a lock, not a restart. Is there maybe a setting I’m missing for that because the extension is still able to do it.
Okay, good! And this is the expected behaviour for now (and since desktop app version 2025.8.0 – so I’m a bit confused, that you only recognized this now…). – This feature will get reintroduced with one of the next releases.
(if you’re interested, here’s more to that whole issue: Unable to unlock Bitwarden desktop app on app start using Windows Hello – a key update would be this post: Unable to unlock Bitwarden desktop app on app start using Windows Hello - #117 by Micah_Edelblut)
Ah, and perfect, that the extension issue is resolved now!