With a password manager you can secure all your login details in a digital safe. In addition to well-known applications such as LastPass and 1Password, there is the free password manager Bitwarden. That is a popular and fast growing open source alternative that works quickly and easily. Read here what you can do with it.
A password manager is a very practical tool for keeping accounts and other important data. You can access that data from all your devices while remembering just one master password or PIN. An additional advantage is that you can effortlessly create unique and extra strong passwords. After all, you do not have to remember them yourself. In addition to well-known players such as LastPass, Dashlane, 1Password and Roboform, an attractive newcomer occasionally comes along. Such as Bitwarden, which has already attracted many users, especially at LastPass. Perhaps because LastPass has become much more expensive since the acquisition by LogMeIn without really adding anything.
An added value of Bitwarden is that it is open source and can therefore not hide anything, except of course your carefully encrypted passwords. The password manager also appears to be very user-friendly. Let’s get started!
Set master password and explore vault
We will first create a personal user account. Go to the site of Bitwarden and click Create Account. Enter your email address, name and a (strong) master password. That is the password that gives you access to the secure safe. Based on this password, all your login details are encrypted with a powerful algorithm. On the company’s servers, your data is also stored in encrypted form, so that (for example in case of a data leak) it is actually useless without that master password.
After creating the account, log in to the so-called Web Vault, your (currently empty) digital safe. Choose top right, bottom Confirm email address, the option to send a verification link to your email address. Via that link you can confirm the e-mail address and – after logging in again – use all the possibilities of Bitwarden.
In the Web Vault you can, on the tab My Safe, manage the items in the digital vault, such as your login details (Sign Up), creditcard information (Map), personal information (Identity) and notes (Safe notes). You can add unlimited data and even synchronize unlimited with other devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. Updating happens for the most part unnoticed in the background as soon as you change anything.
Are you already using another password manager, such as LastPass or Roboform? Then you can click on the tab Tools import the data from numerous password managers after you have exported them from the existing password manager. What is also possible is that you use them side by side for a while and take over passwords when you need them. This also cleans up the often long list of partly redundant login details.
You can also export Bitwarden data yourself on this tab. Be careful, because such an export file contains your readable passwords. The reports that you can view here are only available with a Premium account (more about which later).
In addition to the Web Vault, you can of course also access the digital safe with other applications. For example, there are desktop applications for Windows, macOS or Linux that are especially useful for managing the stored data. There are also extensions for all major browsers, including Chrome and Firefox.
This allows you to log in to your accounts automatically while browsing, but also easily store new login details in the safe. Furthermore, there are apps available for both Android and iOS (iPhone and iPad) that help you enter passwords on these devices.
Set up two-step verification
After this, it is smart to shield access with two-step verification. To do this, go to the tab Settings and then Two-step notification. Then click behind Authentication app on Management. Now enter your master password. After this you will see a qr code. Open an app like Google Authenticator or Authy, choose the option to add an account and scan the qr code. The app will then generate an initial access code that you transfer to the Web Vault to permanently enable two-step verification.
In the future, you will need to enter a passcode on each new device on which you will be using the Web Vault – or one of Bitwarden’s other applications. For that you have to grab the smartphone with the app.
Tip: save the recovery code that you send Settings, Two-step login to avoid being locked out if you lose your smartphone, for example!
Bitwarden Premium benefits
We’ve now covered the main features of Bitwarden’s free account in a nutshell. For most, these are more than enough features, but those who want to can consider upgrading to Premium. An upgrade to Premium ($ 10 / year) can be attractive in some situations. For example, thanks to 1 GB of encrypted file storage, you can add attachments to items in the safe, for example a photo of your credit card.
Premium also offers extra possibilities to log in with two-step verification for your safe itself. In addition, Premium provides the ability to generate verification codes for accounts protected with two-step verification, such as Dropbox and GitHub, effectively taking over the role of Google Authenticator. In addition, reports provide advice on your password usage to prevent exposed, duplicated or weak passwords.
We recommend that you regularly back up your important files. Yet it regularly fails. Take a look at our Backup and recovery course, full of tips for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. Eventually with 180-page practical book!
Bitwarden extensions
A password manager naturally requires a good browser extension. Bitwarden has done that well. Except for Chrome and Firefox, it also offers extensions for Safari, Opera, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi and Brave. We take Bitwarden for Chrome as an example. Click on the button Add to Chrome. This will add the Bitwarden icon to your browser. Click on the icon, choose login and enter your login details. If you have enabled two-step verification, an access code is also required.
It is convenient the option Remember my data turn on. After logging in, go to the tab Settings and choose under Security when the account should be locked. For example after a certain time, after restarting the browser or never. You only use the latter option on a device that others cannot access. You can also choose to unlock with a PIN code instead of the master password, which often works easier and faster in practice.
If you log in to a certain website for which an account in Bitwarden does not yet exist, the program will ask via a bar at the top of the browser whether it should store the login details in the safe. If that recognition does not work once, the question will be omitted, but you can (via the option Add login) add the login details manually. You can fine-tune recognition for a website, such as the part of the link it should look at. Where necessary, you can expand login details with an extra field (for example a membership number).
If Bitwarden finds an account in the safe when you log in, you will see this by the icon, which indicates the number of matching accounts with a number. Also useful to know is that the browser extension can generate a password for you for an account. And if you change an account’s password, Bitwarden asks if it should update the data in the digital vault.
Finally, what is also very practical are the identities to be created, so that you can, for example, automatically fill in forms with your address details and telephone number.
Bitwarden on smartphones (Android, iOS)
Bitwarden has a well-functioning app available for both Android and iOS (iPhone and iPad). We take the iPad as an example. After logging in with your account and once – if you have enabled two-step verification – the access code, you will have access to all items in the digital safe. In the future you can optionally protect access with a PIN.
The safe is automatically kept up to date with the help of push notifications. As soon as you add or change a password on another device, it is also on your iPad.
Bitwarden also helps with logging into accounts via the browser. This has recently been improved thanks to a new feature in iOS 12. Passwords can now be entered directly from the keyboard. To activate it open Settings, tap on Passwords & Accounts and then Fill in automatically. Enable the option and choose Bitwarden from the list. Confirm with your master password. After this you can log in quickly and easily while browsing.
With Android 8 in some browsers, and since Android 9 in many more browsers, this is roughly the same. The accessibility facilities that were used for this (or actually misused) are therefore no longer necessary.
Share passwords
In companies but also in a family situation, it will often happen that you want to share certain data with each other, for example login data for the internet provider or a safe note with savings or software licenses. This is very easy with Bitwarden. To set it up, go to the Web Vault and then to Settings. Choose Organizations.
With the free package, you can share data with two users and create two collections, in order to organize data more logically. The family package costs a dollar a month and allows sharing with up to five users and unlimited collections. It also allows you to add up to 1 GB of attachments to items shared across the organization.
There are also some business packages. Such an organization is completely separate from the Premium accounts. Each individual user of the organization can choose the extras of Premium, but that is not an obligation.
If you have created an organization and want to manage it, go back to Institutions, Organizations and click on the name of the organization. After this you will enter the management section for the organization. Via tabs you can go to Safe with all shared items and Management where you can invite users to the organization. You can choose which rights and restrictions there are for that user, such as the collections they have access to.
You can also edit the collections in this section. Sharing items with the organization is actually easy after this. In your own safe you will see an option for each item to share it with the organization, after which that organization will in fact become the owner of the item. Every change is made to the members of the organization.
Host yourself
Finally. There is little objection to using Bitwarden through the company’s standard servers. It is true that your passwords are stored there, but only in encrypted form, which makes them useless without your master password. If you don’t fully trust that and have experience with hosting applications yourself, you can also host Bitwarden on your own server. That server must have relatively much memory (at least 2 GB).
Bitwarden_rs also offers a lightweight (and also open source) alternative developed by third parties. It offers almost all functions and just supports the standard applications of Bitwarden, such as the browser extensions. Creating an organization is even possible without additional costs and further restrictions.
.