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Password Manager Browser Extensions

8 min read

Table of Contents

Bitwarden browser extensions integrate password management directly into your favorite browser. Download a Bitwarden browser extension from your browser’s marketplace or app store, or from the Bitwarden Downloads page.

Browser extensions are supported for the two most recent versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Microsoft Edge, and Safari. For Vivaldi, Brave, and Tor, only the most recent version is supported.

Tip

The Safari browser extension is packaged with the desktop app, available for download from the macOS App Store.

First steps #

Let’s start your Bitwarden browser extension journey by adding a new login item to your vault and making sure it’s secure and easy to find:

Create a folder #

Folders are a great way to make sure you can always find vault items when you need to use them. To create a folder:

  1. Select the Settings tab and choose Folders from the settings list.
  2. Select the Add icon.
  3. Give your folder a name (for example, Social Media), and select Save.

Add a login #

Now let’s add a login to your new folder. To create a new login item:

  1. Navigate to the My Vault tab and select the Add icon.
  2. Choose which type of item to create (in this case, select Login).
  3. Enter the basic information for this login. For now, give the item:
    1. A Name to help you easily recognize it (for example, Twitter Account).
    2. Your Username.
    3. Your current Password (we will replace this with a stronger password soon).
  4. In the URI 1 field, enter the URL where you log in to the account (for example, https://twitter.com/login).
  5. Select a folder from the Folder dropdown. If you are following our example, choose the Social Media folder you just created.
  6. Nice work! Select Save to continue.

Generate a strong password #

Now that you have saved a new login, let’s improve its security by replacing your password with a stronger one:

  1. In your web browser, login to the account with your existing username and password. In that account, find where you can Change your password.
  2. On the Change your password form, enter your Current Password, which you can copy and paste from Bitwarden using the Copy icon.
  3. Back in Bitwarden, open the login item and select the Edit button.
  4. In the Password box, select Generate and select Yes to overwrite your old password. This will replace your password with a randomly-generated strong password. Moving from Fido1234 to X@Ln@x9J@&u@5n##B can stop a hacker.
  5. Select Save.
  6. Copy your new password and paste it into the New Password and Confirm Password fields back on the website.

Congratulations! Your login is now saved in Bitwarden for secure and easy use!

Add a second account #

Do you have multiple Bitwarden accounts, perhaps one for personal use and one for work? The browser extension can be logged in to five accounts at once!

To login to an additional account, select the currently logged-in account from the top-right corner of the browser extension.

Once you have opened the account switching menu, select Add Account:

Once you log in to your second account, you can quickly swap between them from the same menu, which will also show the current status of each account’s vault (locked or unlocked). If you log out of one of these accounts, it will be removed from this list.

Note:

Account switching on the browser extension is not available on Safari at this time.

Next steps #

Now that you have mastered the basics let’s dig into one more action that you will take regularly, Auto-fill and Auto-save, and three recommended setup steps, easier vault unlocking, pinning the extension to your browser, and disabling the browser’s built-in password manager:

Auto-fill a login #

Bitwarden browser extensions have a unique Tab view, which automatically detects the URI (for example, google.com) of the page displayed in your open tab and finds any logins with corresponding URIs.

When a login has a corresponding URI, the Bitwarden icon will overlay a notification bubble reporting the number of logins you have for that web page:

Selecting the login inside the browser extension will auto-fill your username and password in the detected input fields.

There are a few other methods of auto-filling from your browser extension, including context menus and keyboard shortcuts.

Auto-save a login #

When you log in to a website without using auto-fill, Bitwarden will offer to remember logins if:

  • An item with that URI isn’t in your vault.
  • An item with that URI is in your vault, but has a different username or password.

When you see this banner, select Save to add a new login item with the username, password, and URI, or Update button to update and existing item with the new password or username:

Add a Login

Update a Login

If you’re a member of an organization using the Remove individual vault policy, selecting Save will take you to a screen where you can choose which collection to add it to. Otherwise, you’ll have the options to Select folder… for the item or Edit the item before saving it.

Remove individual vault

Turning on the Remove individual vault policy will require non-owner/non-admin users to save vault Items to an organization by preventing ownership of vault items for organization members. A banner is displayed to users on the Add Item screen indicating that a policy is affecting their ownership options. This policy is enforced even for users who have only accepted invitation to your organization, however this policy is not enforced for owners and admins.

Note:

Vault items that were created prior to the implementation of this policy or prior to joining the organization will remain in the user’s individual vault.

If you do not want to see this banner, turn off the Ask to add login option from the Options menu.

Note:

You can save and autofill passkeys with the Bitwarden browser extension.

Unlock with PIN or biometrics #

For fast access to your credentials, setup a PIN or biometrics to unlock your vault. To setup a PIN, for example:

  1. Open the Settings tab.
  2. In the Security section, check the Unlock with PIN checkbox.
  3. Enter the desired PIN code in the input box. PIN codes can be any combination of characters (a-z, 0-9, $, #, etc.)

Tip

Optional: The pre-check option Ask for biometrics on launch will require you to enter your master password instead of a PIN when your browser restarts. If you want to be able to unlock with a PIN when you browser restarts, uncheck this option.

Pin the extension #

Pinning the browser extension will ensure that it’s easily accessible each time you open your browser. The procedure differs based on which browser you are using:

Chrome #

Select the Extensions icon next to the address bar and select the Pin icon next to Bitwarden:

Firefox #

Enter about:addons in the address bar and toggle Bitwarden on. To customize where it appears in your browser, click the Extensions icon located on the toolbar. Select the Bitwarden  gear icon and choose Pin to Toolbar.

You can also activate a persistent Bitwarden sidebar by selecting View → Sidebar → Bitwarden from the Firefox menu.

Safari #

Right-click anywhere in the tool bar and select Customize Toolbar to open a drag-and-drop interface that lets you move or remove icons in your toolbar:

Browser Pop-out #

The Bitwarden browser extension has a pop-out feature that will allow you to reposition the client while using your internet browser. To access the browser extension pop-out feature:

  1. Log in or unlock your Bitwarden browser extension client.
  2. Select the pop-out button located on the navigation bar of your client.

Disable a built-in password manager #

Most web browsers will automatically save your passwords by default, but experts generally agree that built-in password managers are more vulnerable than dedicated solutions such as Bitwarden:

Chrome/Chromium #

In Chrome or any Chromium-based browser (Edge, Opera, and Brave), navigate to the Passwords page by entering chrome://password-manager/settings in the address bar, substituting chrome for your browser name (for example, brave://password-manager/settings).

On this page, toggle off both the Offer to save passwords option and the Auto Sign-in option:

This page will also list any Saved Passwords that are being stored by the browser:

If you haven’t already saved these passwords in Bitwarden, export them to prepare for future import to Bitwarden. Once exported, you should delete these passwords from the browser’s storage.

Firefox #

In Firefox, navigate to Preferences → Privacy & Security and scroll down to the Logins and Passwords section. In this section, uncheck all the pre-checked options:

You should also find out which logins Firefox has already saved by selecting the Saved Logins… button:

If you haven’t already saved these passwords in Bitwarden, export them for future import to Bitwarden. Once exported, you should Remove these passwords from Firefox.

Safari #

In Safari, open Preferences from the menu bar and navigate to the AutoFill tab. On this tab, uncheck all the pre-checked options:

You should also find out which passwords Safari has already saved by navigating to the Passwords tab:

If you haven’t already saved these passwords in Bitwarden, create login items in Bitwarden for these passwords. Once all saved passwords are in Bitwarden, Remove these passwords from Safari.

Vivaldi #

In Vivaldi, open the Vivaldi Settings window and select Privacy from the left-hand navigation. Scroll down to the Passwords section and uncheck the Save Webpage Passwords option:

You should also find out which passwords Vivaldi has already saved by selecting the Show Saved Passwords button:

If you haven’t already saved these passwords in Bitwarden, create login items in Bitwarden for these passwords. Once all saved passwords are in Bitwarden, remove these passwords from Vivaldi by right-clicking on each and selecting Delete Password.

Tor #

Despite sharing roots with Firefox, Tor is unique in that it doesn’t save your logins by default. If you haven’t manually configured Tor to save and autofill logins, you are already all set.

If you did, navigate to the Passwords page by entering about:preferences#privacy in the address bar, and scroll down to the Logins and Passwords section. Toggle off all the options that you had checked:

You should also find out which logins Tor has already saved by selecting the Saved Logins… button:

If you haven’t already saved these passwords in Bitwarden, create login items in Bitwarden for these passwords. Once all saved passwords are in Bitwarden, Remove these passwords from Tor.

DuckDuckGo #

In DuckDuckGo, navigate to Settings → Autofill. From this screen, uncheck the box for Usernames and passwords.

You can create a backup of your existing data by selecting Export Passwords. Once you have created a backup file, select View Autofill Content… and delete the stored autofill data to remove previously saved suggestions.

In the Password Manager section, macOS users can choose to use Bitwarden.

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