RTFA: Bitwarden developers wanted to make the permission optional, but for Firefox access to native applications can't be requested as an optional requirement.

RTFA: Bitwarden developers wanted to make the permission optional, but for Firefox access to native applications can't be requested as an optional requirement. Result: they added the new permission as non optional on both and broke both. If the extension was working without that permission before - as it was - the browsers should have kept running without the permission and asked for it only when needed, IE: in the cases where the native application was running and the user decided to unlock the vault by using biometrics. That's a fail for both Chrome and Firefox, both of which will disable the extension until the new permission is given. Bitwarden failed by not considering the wider impact of their choice to change the required permissions knowing that they could have had the feature in Chrome - by using the permission as optional - and not in Firefox, thus not breaking people's usage of it.