Add & Manage Trusted Emergency Contacts
Trusted contacts are the people who you allow to log in to your Bitwarden account with emergency access. You can add or update your trusted emergency contacts at any time.
Add a trusted emergency contact
Adding a trusted contact for emergency access is available to premium users, including members of paid organizations (Families, Teams, and Enterprise). If your organization turned on the Automatic confirmation policy, emergency access is not available for your account.
To designate a trusted contact for emergency access:
Trusted emergency contact settings
For each trusted contact, pick the wait time before access is granted automatically and the level of access they receive.
User access
Trusted contacts can be granted either view or takeover access, giving you control over what they can do if they ever need to step in:
View: When an emergency access request is granted, this user is granted view/read access to all items in your individual vault, including login items' passwords and attachments.
Takeover: When an emergency access request is granted, this user must create a master password for permanent read/write access to your vault. This will replace your previous master password and remove any two-step login methods that were previously set up.
Wait time
When a trusted contact requests access, you can manually approve or deny it. If you don't respond, access is automatically approved after the wait time you specified when adding that specific trusted contact. The minimum wait time is one day.
Change trusted emergency contact settings
To change an emergency contact's user access or wait time:
Go to Settings → Emergency access.
Select the user's email, which will open their details.
Update the User access or Wait time as desired.
Select Save.
tip
You can also manage pending or granted emergency access requests from Settings → Emergency access.
Remove a trusted emergency contact
To remove a trusted emergency contact from your account:
Go to Settings → Emergency access.
Select the Menu icon.
Select Remove.
Select Yes to confirm.
Next steps
Share with your trusted contacts how to request access, should the need arise.
Learn how to handle emergency access requests to your account.