I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#1

Post by maxloh » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:03 PM UTC

I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden
xn--gckvb8fzb.com

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#2

Post by lambdadelirium » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

Full of skill issues

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#3

Post by princevegeta89 » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:22 PM UTC

Well, I know Bitwarden is pretty demanding and also not so straightforward to do self-hosting.

But we have Vaultwarden which is ridiculously easy to deploy and also very lightweight while being immensely popular; has never had any major security incidents so far - and it has thousands of eyes on it for every single commit.

I've been hosting this for three years now and I have never had a single problem with it. always worked with my Bitwarden clients on all of my devices. So if you would like to, try Vaultwarden.

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#4

Post by kotaKat » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:27 PM UTC

Ahahahah, I am enjoying the little turn-off-your-Javascript warning that comes back when you click on a link in a new tab from the page to something linked in the article.

My tab's title: "Ask HN: How could I safely contact drug cartels?"

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#5

Post by pretzellogician » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:28 PM UTC

I'm a free Bitwarden user, I don't plan to self-host stuff, and... honestly I have no idea what this person is going on about.

And "Aside from the aforementioned technical details, Bitwarden is (and has always been) one of the subjectively worst applications on my phones and my desktop in terms of user interface. "

Really!!? How many apps has this person used?

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#6

Post by sph » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC

Complaining about rent-seeking for $20/year? OK mate.

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#7

Post by prism56 » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

I don't self host Bitwarden so 90% of this doesn't really apply.

I did however want to comment on the tab changing it's favicon and title everytime you change to another tab. Quite a cool "advertising" method for what javascript can do.

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#8

Post by jrm4 » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

Probably my biggest tech hill-i'll-die-on is:

Password management involving a 3rd party is dumb and should never ever have been a thing. Before two parties had the secret (or something related to it) and now three parties have it and that's objectively worse -- even taking into account "the lazy user" or whatever.

I know we're past that in a lot of places for a lot of people, but nope, my dad and his printed out sheet of password next to his desk is still beating every company out there.

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#9

Post by cjs_ac » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

I use pass[0], and it works well for me. It's secured by PGP and passwords are shared between devices using git.

[0] https://www.passwordstore.org/

Re: I Do Not Recommend Bitwarden

#10

Post by muppetman » Sat, May 02, 2026, 8:34 PM UTC

princevegeta89 wrote: post #3

Well, I know Bitwarden is pretty demanding and also not so straightforward to do self-hosting. But we have Vaultwarden which is ridiculously easy to deploy and also very lightweight while being immensely popular; has never had any major security incidents so far - and it has thousands of eyes on it for every single commit. I've been hosting this for three years now and I have never had a single problem with it. alway…

You could have just posted "I didn't read the article" instead of this comment. It specifically addresses vaultwarden quite a number of times.