Password Manager FAQs

This article contains frequently asked questions (FAQs) about general Bitwarden Password Manager functionality.

A: As a zero-knowledge encryption solution, Bitwarden and its systems have no knowledge of, way to retrieve, or way to reset your master password. If you have already lost your master password, there is unfortunately no way for the team to recover the account. For help understanding what to do next, or what to do proactively to protect yourself from such a scenario, refer to the article on your master password.

A: There is! Users with a premium subscription can proactively setup trusted emergency contacts who can access your vault in case of emergency. For more information, see Emergency Access.

A: To change your master password hint:

1. In the web app, navigate to Settings → Security → Master password.

2. To change just your hint, enter your current master password in the Current master password, New master password, and Confirm master password boxes to prevent it from being changed, and enter a hint in the Master password hint box.

3. Select the Change master password button.

A: To change the email address attached to your account:

1. In the web app, navigate to Settings → My account.

2. On the My Account page, find the Change email section.

3. Enter your current Master password to prove you have the authority to take this action, and specify the New email you'd like to change to.

4. Select the Continue button.

   Bitwarden will email a verification code to the specified email address. Check your inbox for the code and enter it into the Code text input displayed in your web vault to finalize the change. If you don't receive the verification code, check your spam folder. You can also whitelist no-reply@bitwarden.com to help ensure delivery in the future.

When you change your email address, you should immediately logout of all Bitwarden apps you use, and log back in with the new credentials. Sessions using a "stale" email address will eventually be logged out.

A: When you verify your email address, you'll unlock the ability to create file Sends (provided you also have access to premium features).

A: Typically, this is because an app's vault data has fallen behind a web vault or other app's. Performing a vault sync should bring everything up to date. For more information, see Sync your Vault.

A: You can use encrypted exports to make secure long-term backups of your vault data that are encrypted with your account encryption key.

Alternatively, you can use a program such as PeaZip to create an encrypted archive of the file after exporting a plaintext file from Bitwarden.

You can learn more about PeaZip here:

• http://www.peazip.org/

• https://github.com/giorgiotani/PeaZip

A: You can set the Bitwarden desktop app to automatically open on startup.

1. Select the Start (Windows Logo) button, select All apps, and scroll to find the Bitwarden shortcut.

2. Right-click the Bitwarden desktop app, select More, and then select Open file location.

3. With the file location open, press the Windows logo key + R, type shell:startup, then select OK. This opens the startup folder.

4. Copy and paste the shortcut to the Bitwarden desktop app from the file location to the startup folder.

A: Typically this occurs for users that have a setting on their browser which clears their local storage and/or cookies whenever they close the browser or while they are using the browser. There are extensions that perform these actions. If this happens, you lose the indicator which tells our servers that it is an existing device. New device notification messages are not contingent on the IP address, only the device itself. We use local storage in the browser or client to label the device with an id. If that id has never logged in before then you will get an email. If a user clears this local storage, a new id is generated for that device and it will get a new email.

You may need to make an exception for Bitwarden or configure your whitelist to keep the cookie or local storage from being cleared for Bitwarden. This could also happen if you have your browser set to never remember history.

A: Yes! You can download directly from GitHub https://github.com/bitwarden/mobile/releases or via F-Droid by adding our repo https://mobileapp.bitwarden.com/fdroid/, which removes all non-approved libraries.

Unfortunately, F-Droid can not compile our app from source as it is based on Xamarin and it is not supported by F-Droid's current compiler methods, so we must use a separate repo.

A: Yes! On Windows, you can add the environment variable ELECTRON_NO_UPDATER=1 to your desktop app template to prevent automatic update procedures from trying and failing on your end-user workstations.

A: Add the environment variable ELECTRON_ENABLE_LOGGING=true to your desktop app template to print logs from the desktop app to the console, or start the desktop app from your console and use command line switches to write logs to a file:

• (Windows) Bitwarden.exe --enable-logging=file --log-file=bitwarden.log

• (macOS) ./Bitwarden.app/Contents/MacOS/Bitwarden --enable-logging=file --log-file=bitwarden.log

A: Yes! You can view the last five passwords for any login Item. Open the item in question and select the number next to Password history near the bottom of the window:

A: Yes, you can view the history of the password generator from that client application's generator screen. Please note this history is separate per app and is not synchronized between devices.

A: When you purge an individual vault, all vault items and folders will be deleted. When you purge an organization vault, all shared (for example owned by the organization) vault items will be deleted however existing users, collections, and groups will remain in place.

A: Not directly from Bitwarden, however you can export your vault data as a .csv or .json file and print it out from your text editor.

A: Windows Clipboard will save a list of previously copied items. Windows Clipboard settings can be accessed by accessing Settings and clipboard.

A: No, deleting a Bitwarden app/extension will not delete your vault data. Vault data will remain encrypted on the server. If you wish to permanently delete your vault data, see Delete an Account or Organization.

A: There is a Bitwarden browser extension for Firefox on Android mobile devices. However, this extension is not officially supported by Bitwarden, and the team is aware that some functionality in this client is known to not work correctly. Android users may prefer to use the Bitwarden mobile app for an officially supported password manager client.

A: Yes, Bitwarden does include settings in the desktop app to adjust for system performance:

• Graphical (GPU) acceleration can be disabled in two ways on Bitwarden desktop apps:

  • Navigate to Settings → APP SETTINGS (ALL ACCOUNTS) and uncheck the box labeled Use hardware acceleration.

  • From the navigation bar, Help → Troubleshooting → Disable hardware acceleration and restart.