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I really, really want to be a big fan of Bitwarden. I even used it for the past year and a half. However, the last time HN talked about Bitwarden 7 months ago,
by keehun 8y ago
I really, really want to be a big fan of Bitwarden. I even used it for the past year and a half. However, the last time HN talked about Bitwarden 7 months ago, I listed some reasons[0] why Bitwarden still fell massively short of 1Password, and I feel that those three points have not been addressed (which I believe impacts the friction/convenience of using Bitwarden).
My three points then were:
1. A stand-alone desktop app. Quite annoying to have to open up a browser every time I want to access a password. Basically, it's as inconvenient as Keychain on OSX if you're not using a browser when you need a login info. This could be solved if the browser plugin popup could be persisted as its own window.
2. iOS app is not polished. Not sure about Android app as I've not used it. (* biggest problem then was how slow search was. It has been improved although nowhere as fast as 1Password's—still)
3. In the Safari extension, I would love to be able to search and use item entries that are not specific to the domain. Sometimes, I have other info in secured notes or password entries without a domain that I want to get to from the extension. In these cases, I've had to leave the browser and open the actual app to get access to them.
I just migrated from Bitwarden to 1Password a few days ago and have been much happier since—especially with 1Password's ability to generate 2 factor tokens and put them in your pasteboard automatically so you don't ever have to pull up an Authenticator app!
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734260
- xxkylexx 8y agoThere has been a standalone Windows desktop app since February. https://bitwarden.com/#download https://bitwarden.com/#download > Especially with 1Password's ability to generate 2 factor tokens and put them in your pasteboard automatically so you don't ever have to pull up an Authenticator app! Bitwarden also does this.
- keehun 8y agoThanks for letting me know! Somehow, it wasn't very obvious to me on both desktop app and OTP feature. I still felt its sluggish performance on launch/search/sync was slowing me down a lot throughout the day.
- philliphaydon 8y ago> I still felt its sluggish performance on launch/search/sync was slowing me down a lot throughout the day. I recently switched (maybe 5 weeks or so, ago, from 1Password to Bitwarden, after finding out about it on HN) I imported ~400 odd logins from 1Password, I honestly don't find it any slower than 1 Password. I did notice that with Discord, both 1Password and Bitwarden now integrate with the new iOS password apis.
- keehun 8y agoMaybe it's just my phone (6) but you may find that once you get 1000+ logins, Bitwarden falls apart pretty quickly. I've heard the same from people with 800+ logins. I remember it used to be very quick when I initially used it with a few plugins. IIRC from their Github issue threads, Bitwarden is using Xamarin, and performant UI has been a consistent struggle with many login entries.
- kryogen1c 8y agohow in God's name do you end up with _thousands_ of logins, or even 800? I work in a pretty large MSP in IT with tons of different programs, websites, and clients. Even if I added every single password (which I most surely would not do), I can't imagine there being more than two or three hundred. Conservatively, if every of two hundred clients has thirty passwords, that's still only 600.
- kadoban 8y agoTwo hundred times thirty is 6000
- kryogen1c 8y ago...well this is awkward.
- some_account 8y ago
- lhl 8y agoI've been a 1Password user for about 10 years, but I never moved to 1Password 6, as I didn't want to sync my vault to their servers (even if it's E2E encrypted). I've moved from being primarily an OSX user to Linux, and as a result, my experience has progressively gotten worse enough on 1PW (broken FF extension, general jankiness running on Wine) that I'm finally looking switch off, either to KeePassXC or to Bitwarden. As far as a desktop app, it's electron-based, but there is a cross-platform Bitwarden app that seems to work well enough (responsive, minimizes to tray, etc). I've yet to import all my passwords into Bitwarden (still comparing the Ruby, Go, and Rust standalone server implementations), so I guess we'll see where the experience is after I fully switch. Regarding 2FA, while it doesn't totally expose you, if you put your token in your PW manager, you've definitely significantly weakened your security.
- jchw 8y agoIf you want to use 1Password on Linux, the experience is alright nowadays. I've been using this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1password-x-password-manager/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1password-x-p... ..and it works great. Same as 1Password X for Chrome, it does not require a desktop app, and handles certain things like TOTP a bit more seamlessly.
- hisyam 8y agoYou don't have to sync your vault in 1Password 6.
- xoa 8y agoNor in 1Password 7 (the latest version). They do push it pretty hard, and given their evasiveness/dishonesty about the business implications of subscriptions and the push I wouldn't blame anyone for being concerned that stand alone license+vault support might be removed in a future version (they have said there will be no more free version updates IIRC though). However, for the time being subscriptions and 1P's cloud service remain optional and possibly disappointing only in terms of eliminating what might have been, not anything that already existed.
- 8y ago
- brazzledazzle 8y agoSomeone else pointed it out but it’s worth repeating that the convenience of having your 2FA on your laptop/desktop might be making a significant security trade off. It’s not really 2FA if it’s on the same device.
- keehun 8y agoThat’s true. I had lost sight of that... well, I wish more places would support a Yubikey!
- LyndsySimon 8y agoBitwarden itself allows you to require a Yubikey for each credential retrieval. I'm not sure how that would differ from having the Yubikey itself be the credential, from an attack surface standpoint.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ohthehugemanate 8y agoEr, there IS a desktop client for Linux/windows/iOS. Also a CLI client, FWIW. And an API so you can fork and improve it yourself if you like. I can't speak to the iOS or Safari versions, but it's just angularjs underneath the FF extension, so I imagine it's quite similar to what I've used. And I quite like the Ux. And bitwarden has included a 2FA generator for at least a year.
- e12e 8y agoWait, there's an official cli client now? [ed: here it is https://help.bitwarden.com/article/cli/#quick-start https://help.bitwarden.com/article/cli/#quick-start Seems a little more gnarly for scripting than pass (pass leverages gpg agent for getting a passphrase/keeping a "session" - but might work for my primary need - simplyfing VPN logins) ]
- xtiansimon 8y agoI used 1Password for years on iOS and stored my Vault in iCloud. But AgileBits’s intention to change to subscription model was a deal breaker. Then they made some bad design decisions at the time of iOS 11 upgrade. I lost my vault, and given their hostility towards non-subscribers, I no longer feel comfortable trusting the product won’t fail again. I changed to BitWarden to handle my low-level net passwords, and that’s perfectly adequate.
- unicornporn 8y ago> 1. A stand-alone desktop app. Quite annoying to have to open up a browser every time I want to access a password. It looks like the have a native desktop app for Win/Mac/Lin? https://bitwarden.com/#download https://bitwarden.com/#download