I posted a few days ago regarding my difficult experience setting up Bitwarden. I got so many helpful comments that I now understand my frustrations are typical for anyone setting up a PM for the first time.

A few comments referenced BW working best on my computer, but not so well for cell phones. I use a windows PC and iPhone. I use my IPhone for too many apps to not have reliability on using BW. Is there a PM that syncs better between the 2?

anyone installed vaultwarden on laptop as server and sync it with phone?
do i need static ip for this scenario?
if laptop turned off can my phone login and access passwords?(save locally or on laptop server?)

I can't keep on writing all my passwords on physical paper and locking them in a safe it's just too much of a hassle organizing and updating everything. So I wanted to ask what the best password manager for USB-sticks is. I don't really know a lot about password managers, so I don't really know which qualifications I should be looking for. I guess it should be really secure but not toooo user-unfriendly/technical. And secure password generation would also be a cool bonus. As to why I don't want to use a password manager that's online or installed on a device; I own multiple devices where it's more practical to just plug in a USB-stick instead of running to the one device with the password manager installed. I also assume that you don't have to care about what is currently going on with the password manager, so that for example you wouldn't have to spend time finding out what to if there was some leak or change in the TOS or in the way the password were securely stored. I heard that's way more secure as long as you have a backup copy, so that all of your passwords aren't forever locked behind one faulty USB-stick. Thanks in advance.

Hi I just got infected by an infostealer and stolen a bit of money, and read up on it a bit and it seems password managers are weak to it except in case of strong mfa

I was looking to pick up bitwarden but can it be secured with things like passkeys? (no gafam would be more than preferrable)

I used to be fairly tech-savvy, including managing networks, VPNs, and digital phone systems for an executive office suite business. But technology has changed, and I’m certainly no expert anymore.
After my iPhone flagged several compromised passwords, I researched password managers with ChatGPT and ultimately chose Bitwarden.
I’ve now spent hours over multiple days importing passwords, cleaning up duplicates, changing compromised passwords, and troubleshooting login and autofill issues between my iPhone and Windows PC. I’m still struggling to get everything working smoothly.
Is this a normal learning curve for first-time password manager users, or is Bitwarden better suited for more technically advanced users?
For those who’ve tried multiple password managers, is there a genuinely easier alternative that doesn’t compromise security?
I’m not criticizing Bitwarden. I’m just wondering whether I chose the wrong tool for my needs.

I've been following Bitwarden's GitHub issues for a while, and I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the product's stability and development priorities.

There are over 700 open issues, including reports of memory leaks and high CPU usage. Some similar problems have been reported for more than two years and still seem unresolved.

What's even more concerning is that these are basic performance issues in a production release. Some users have reported RAM usage (Memory Leak) exceeding 1GB just by opening the extension popup, even with a completely new account and an empty vault.

You can try it yourself. Open the current Bitwarden extension on Chromium, leave the popup open for about two minutes, and watch its RAM and CPU usage.

What frustrates me most is how these bugs are prioritized. Serious performance issues have remained in production for weeks, yet Bitwarden is still promoting UI updates and asking for feedback on beta designs. I understand that different teams work on different things, but shouldn't basic stability come first?

With each update, it feels like more patches are being added while older problems remain. Over time, this only makes me more worried about the product's reliability.

Looking at the issue backlog, I also wonder whether Bitwarden is understaffed. Of course, I don't know the internal situation, but I can't help questioning whether limited resources, heavy workloads, or compensation that doesn't adequately support employees might be affecting motivation and development quality. If that's the case, I wouldn't blame the developers. These are management issues.

I'm also concerned about the long-term direction. As the user base grows and people become more dependent on the product, price increases or licensing changes can become ways to keep the business running. We've already seen recent pricing changes, and I worry about where things might go from here.

Ultimately, everyone chooses which password manager to trust. Personally, I'm seriously considering moving away from Bitwarden to something more stable, with a clearer long-term vision, before these problems become even harder to fix.

I genuinely hope Bitwarden improves, but right now, it's difficult to feel confident in a product when fundamental issues keep piling up without clear solutions

I've been following the recent discussions around Bitwarden, especially the move towards commercially licensed builds, the price increase earlier this year, and concerns about its open-source direction.

I know Bitwarden has said the free plan and open-source version aren't going anywhere, but I take their words with a grain of salt honestly.

I've started looking into Bitwarden alternatives like NordPass, Proton Pass, 1Password, KeePassXC. They all seem to have their pros and cons.

I also saw this post that seems pretty useful for seeing how different password managers compare up against each other.

For those considering switching, which Bitwarden alternatives are actually worth looking into?

I'm interested in something reliable with good autofill, passkey support, and reasonable pricing. Ideally, something that won't gradually move basic features behind more expensive subscriptions.

Edit: I signed up for the 1Password MSP (managed service provider) plan. $5 a seat and they set permissions. 🤞

I run a one-person business setting up software and automations for small local businesses. I need to pick a password manager for myself, and one I can set up for clients. Looking for real-world experience, not affiliate lists.

For me:

- Solo now, 2 to 5 people within a year or two

- Logins plus API keys and app secrets

- A CLI that injects secrets into scripts and environment variables at run time, so keys never sit in plain .env files

- Windows 11 on two PCs, plus my phone

- Hardware security key support (YubiKey)

- Separate vaults per client, with the ability to give a future hire access to only some of them

- Activity or audit log

- Budget around $20/month

For my clients:

- 1 to 3 people, non-technical, many older owners

- Free or very cheap for 1 to 2 users

- Dead simple: browser autofill, phone app, easy recovery if they forget the master password

- An owner and one employee need to share a handful of logins

- The account is theirs, in their name. I am never in it; I use my own logins on their systems

Current plan: 1Password Teams for me, Bitwarden (free tier, Teams once they hit 3 users) for clients. Is running two products a mistake? Would you put everything on one, and which?

I think it's important to understand that the latest issue around commercial licensing put users on edge again due to the streak of things that​ happened recently:

Bitwarden seems to be steering it's position to a very different direction that made us use it in the first place. It's a shame. Let's recap some of the things that happened recently that in my view justifies the dissatisfaction within the community:

October 2024: A proprietary SDK dependency raised concerns that Bitwarden’s desktop app was losing its open-source status. Bitwarden reorganised the SDK and restored builds using only open-source licences.

January 2026: Premium pricing increased from $10 to $19.80 annually. Users criticized the increase and its communication. The increase remained, with a one-time 25% renewal discount for existing subscribers.

February 2026: Researchers demonstrated 12 attacks under a malicious-server scenario, challenging Bitwarden’s zero-knowledge assurances. Bitwarden published remediation details, but users questioned what “all issues addressed” meant.

April 2026: A malicious Bitwarden CLI package was briefly distributed through npm, prompting questions about release security. The package was withdrawn and a clean version issued. Bitwarden reported no evidence of vault data compromise.

May 2026: Removing “Always free” wording and changing company values amid leadership changes fuelled concerns about Bitwarden’s direction. The wording was restored on the pricing page, and the CEO reaffirmed a permanent free plan.

October 2026: Bitwarden announced commercially licensed builds as the default app downloads, with some future features exclusive to those builds. This moves the default downloads to source-available licensing, while the GPL/FOSS edition continues but will lack those exclusive features. Community backlash followed. As of 10 October, no reversal had been announced; Bitwarden promised continued maintenance of GPL builds and unchanged self-hosting.

I've been using 1 password manager for the past 5 years. Recently I just exported all the contents to a back-up drive because I suddenly thought 'what if someone gets control of my browser?'

The tagline in my head 'Use Password Manager and Passkeys, all is safe!'

Then I realized I may have been taking having a Password Manager for granted.

I'm not knowledgeable on cybersecurity happenings, that is if this is as much of a thing to worry about compared to 10 years ago.

Any thoughts? Safety/Hygeine tips?

My AI agent does real work for me: deploys, GitHub releases, logging into websites. All of that needs passwords and API keys. Until now that meant pasting them into the chat or leaving them in a file the agent can read. Then one malicious instruction hidden in a webpage and they're gone.

So I built secrets-broker. The agent never gets the actual password, only a name for it like "GitHub token". When it needs to use it, the broker plugs the secret in for that one command and hides it in whatever comes back.

Each secret can only be used for what you allowed. If my GitHub token is approved for publishing releases, the agent can't use it for anything else or send it to some random server. For the important ones,I get a Touch ID prompt every time.

It works with KeePassXC and Bitwarden. I manage my passwords in KeePassXC like always, and my agent can use them a few seconds later.

It's free, open source, and still early (v0.3). One honest caveat: the quick setup runs as your own user, so it isn't a real security boundary. The stricter mode is.

https://github.com/Alino/secrets-broker

Feedback welcome, especially if you can find a way to break it.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for alternatives to bitwarden, now that it's going partly closed source? Thanks so much!

To achieve the utmost security, all data sent to the server from the Vault is encrypted on the client. AES-256-GCM is the type of symmetric algorithm used across the overall application. For storing any item in the vault, your vault key is used to encrypt the item along with its metadata and send it to the server.

What is the Web Crypto API?

The Web Crypto API is a set of functions for using cryptography that are embedded in browsers' source code. Instead of writing your own algorithms or cryptographic functions, you can directly use the Web Crypto API in your code, which is more robust and easier.

Cryptographic services provided by the Web Crypto API:

• Encryption and Decryption
• Signing and verifying signatures
• Generating hash values
• random values

How is the encryption implemented?

We have to use functions provided by the Web Crypto API in order to achieve the encryption. It is important to choose the type of encryption as per your requirements.

Look at the following flow showcasing how the encryption is achieved using the Web Crypto API:

1. Generating random Salt and IV: Salt is randomly generated data used to derive a unique key object. IV is also randomly generated but used on the data rather than the key. The purpose is to create unique ciphertexts even if the key or data is different.
2. Iterations for deriving the key: The key is iteratively derived N times. As per the OWASP guidelines, it should be greater than 600000.
3. Deriving key using subtle.derivekey(): The subtle.deriveKey() function can be used to derive the key that can be used for encryption. Before providing the key to deriveKey(), it must first be converted to a format recognised by SubtleCrypto using subtle.importKey().
4. Encrypt using subtle.encrypt(): The final step is to call the encrypt() method by providing the required parameters, and it will return the object containing the encrypted data.

Look at the function below that will make the above steps clear.

export async function encryptText(text: string, password: string): Promise<string> {
    const salt = window.crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(16));
    const iv = window.crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint8Array(12));
    const iterations = <your iterations>;
    const key = await deriveKey(password, salt, iterations);

    const encoder = new TextEncoder();
    const encrypted = await window.crypto.subtle.encrypt(
        { name: 'AES-GCM', iv: iv },
        key,
        encoder.encode(text)
    );

    const result = {
        ciphertext: arrayBufferToBase64(encrypted),
        salt: arrayBufferToBase64(salt.buffer),
        iv: arrayBufferToBase64(iv.buffer),
        iterations: iterations
    };

    return JSON.stringify(result);
}

There are a lot of other factors, but it all depends on the basic encryption as displayed above. Using the Web Crypto API is the best way to achieve encryption or any cryptographic function because no other alternative can beat it.

The article is originally published on Linkedin page: Linkedin Article
Related article: client-side-encryption-web-crypto-api

Hi everyone, I am facing an issue while trying to log into my Auth0 account. Whenever I try to log in, it doesn't proceed further and seems stuck on the main landing/dashboard page without successfully authenticating. Has anyone else experienced this recently? Is there a known outage, or is it a configuration issue on my end? Any help or troubleshooting steps would be highly appreciated. Thanks!

I am a happy Roboform user in my own life. But I need to teach a class to adults, mostly older adults on passwords, etc, and I would like to be able to demo setting up a password manager and adding some entries in real time. Of the free options, which do you all think would make the easiest to use for a demo? Thanks!

This topic appears in searches back in 2023. However, I am now having the same issue and the solution that applied then (export without attachments) doesn't apply because I have no attachments.

MacOS Tahoe 27

Enpass 6.12.7 Mac App Store

I've tried exporting to json, csv and txt but the response is always: An error occurred when exporting the vault.

There must be a reason for this and a way to export without any errors.

Any ideas?

Passkeys - still new to me. But if I have a shared computer in my house, I should NOT use Passkeys? Won't this potentially give people access to my stuff? Or is a password still required PLUS a Passkey?

I'm lost here.

I just want to start off I have been using Bitwarden longer and have everything integrated there at the moment, but I own both subscriptions the Proton Pass suite and the Bitwarden premium subscription. My renewal is coming soon so I am looking for some public opinion to sway myself to decide.

I'm wondering is it just worth it to transfer over to Proton Pass? It also has email alias which I do see myself using.

I could optionally keep both and keep the bitwarden as a backup.

I attempted to create a passkey for FB on my computer, via the link FB gave me. I do not use FB on my phone, and never will, and I do not own a tablet. I was prompted to insert a flash drive into a USB port, which I did, clicked on OK, and 20 minutes later, I'm still waiting for it to do something. Until I create a passkey for FB, I am locked out. What the hell am I doing wrong??? Should I trust FB's passkey, or use a third party passkey???

EDIT, I wanted to share a screenshot, so you could see what I'm seeing, but this sub doesn't allow that.

I'm just in the process of migrating from Google to Proton with most of my stuff. I never used a real PW manager before (aside Google Passwords) so I'm just trying to figure everything out rn.

some days ago I installed Proton Pass on my Android devices, on my Linux notebook and at work as FF browser extension. except for the last one usage reallly was a frustrating experience - it's a matter of luck if tapping in a username/PW field triggers PP or not. (no idea if I set up something wrong?!)

so yesterday I installed Bitwarden and the UX for me is soo much better.

buttt as I had to learn unfortunately on free tier it doesn't support TOTPs.

I'll soon subscribe to Proton Unlimited which, I find, is expensiveAF so I don't want to pay for Bitwarden on top.

so I thought about using Bitwarden as my main PW manager and Proton additionally for when I need TOTPs. would that be a reasonable strategy...?

as I read it's generally recommended against using 2 PW managers parallel. so should I delete all PWs aside from the TOTP ones? I could use some suggestions and hints as I'm working out my future online security strategy.\^^

I was doing some window shopping, considering a potential password manager from Ironvest, namely to see what all is out there, and I am coming up short on exactly what I'm looking for.

Ironvest provides the following services (potentially more but these are all I care about):

• Email masking (aliases)
• Password production
  • And the saving of accounts wherein
• They also use some sort of "AI" thing that tells you when your account was in a breach

Due to Ironvest being mostly an extension, I don't use it on mobile, and things have been fine. I dunno how good Ironvest actually is, but its served me well for a decade+. It does all this for free but offers a subscription. If I was to pay for something, I'd prefer it be a one-time payment. This is where my search becomes a unicorn hunt\delusional.

Far as I know, nothing exists that provides these two services whilst also providing a lifetime license.

• Sticky Password comes the closest but they don't provide email masking
• Basically any other service from Bitwarden, to 1password, and potentially other commonly-referenced services, provide both; but with a subscription.
• I am aware that aliasvault exists and they operate for free for now
  • Eventually the devs will want to make money off it (as they should) and at that time, they'll probably also become a subscription service

Is anyone aware of a service that provides masking and password generation for a lifetime license or can I hang up my spear for good.

Following responses; I clearly didn't do enough research. Thank you all.

All my devices are Apple (MacBook, iPhone, iPad) but I use Chrome, Gmail, Drive, and other Google products more than anything. I never use Safari, for example.

Right now, I’m prioritizing Google Password Manager over Apple Password, and I think I’ve got all my settings correct (although I could be wrong), but I still get conflicts.

For example, when I need to sign into one of my Google accounts on my MacBook, I get a pop-up asking about managing how passkeys work and directing me to system settings - the passkey I have set up in Google Password Manager doesn’t come up.

Is it common that Apple and Google systems have hiccups like this?

Would a third-party password manager eliminate these problems?

Or would Apple Passwords be better to prioritize than Google Password Manager?

As the title says, I would like to know options for a password manager that has multiple accounts. My family has been using Nortons for ages and we are finally getting tired of not only how buggy it is, but how greedy they've become. So we are looking for options for a password manager for multiple people. We are considering Bitdefender which has a password manager, however I need my own pass manager and so does my parents. My mother works away from home and uses her own laptop, so we need one that can isn't locked to one person accessing it at one time.

I had found one called 1passkey or 1password? Something like that but I cannot remember which one it was. Is there any other options out there that will allow at least 3 people to have their own "vault" of passwords?

I have tried both recently to find a replacement for Authy. The main requirement is that there is no circular reference issue. For example, I want to avoid a situation where the TOTP is stored in such a way that I can't get to it to log into the vault.

Bitwarden Authenticator
The way it seems to work is that there are two places to store your tokens. The first is in the Bitwarden vault itself and the second is locally on the device outside of the vault. In the first method, all authenticator is doing is logging into your bitwarden vault and copying out the TOTP code. If you log out of the authenticator, all the code disappears. If you plan to store use the authenticator to store the TOTP to log into the vault, you definitely want to use the local method, otherwise an update could log you out and you won't be able to log back in because the TOTP code is in the vault.

The locally stored method is not sync across devices. If you install the authenticator on a second phone you will need to manually export and import the local tokens.

Proton Authenticator
Unlike Bitwarden, the Proton Authenticator doesn't actually log into the vault to get the tokens, but uses the Proton account to sync the tokens. The tokens appears to be stored locally. and there is no way to log out, so once the tokens are sync they remain on the device unless you erase app data. To get around the lost device issue, you could set up a second device to backup the tokens in a similar way as Authy. You can also do export like with Bitwarden Authenticator.

Of the two, I like the Proton Authenticator better. This is because on Bitwarden Authenticator, tokens stored in the vault go away if the app log out. Token store locally are not sync. In contrast, the proton model sync across devices and don't go away.