cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/57178743
RyanL Bitwarden Employee
Hello everyone!
Starting in the next release, the Bitwarden apps published to the various stores will be the commercially licensed builds. No action is needed, and the apps will work exactly as they do today.
Bitwarden remains committed to open source security and transparency The GPLv3 OSS licensed version continues to be updated and published on GitHub All current features are available in both versions License details are on GitHub Bitwarden remains committed to a robust, free forever plan for everyoneIf you have any questions, please ask them in this thread. Thanks all!
EDIT:
Bitwarden is not going closed-source You can still fork Bitwarden No change to self-hosting, the licensing change affects those who are repackaging and reselling Bitwarden The free plan is here to stay permanently
It just blows my mind how so many comments use the term ‘purchase’ as if this new enshitification step still allowed for the dictionary meaning of the word.
I used to suggest bitwarden to everyone, now it’s basically ‘start using KeePass, keep a copy of your db in a USB drive in your safe, have fun’.
Well, i was planning to move from my 1password to bitwarden. No need for that now.
So, will you still be able to use the builds with the free license? Does that mean that the App Store builds will be locked down?
zoo what does this s mean?
Pretty much seen it coming when the new CEO came in and removed the words “Transparency” and “Always Free” from the official marketing.
Anyone got some better alternatives for people to try out?
pass https://www.passwordstore.org/ keepass https://keepass.info/
Never made any sense to me why so many people ran away from these two open source options towards Bitwarden.
Bitwarden has much better enterprise options. KeePass is kind of dinky by comparison; even for a single user you immediately run into the problem “how do I sync my new password to my phone automatically?” Bitwarden was just an app that worked.
That being said ~ I see the writing on the wall, and will be going back to the dinky option. Again. This isn’t the first time I’ve been burnt, but I never seem to learn. Self-hosting seems to be the only sustainable long-term option after all. Hopefully the migration isn’t too painful.
I highly recommend anyone reading this get your export out while they still have a good export tool. First thing companies do in enshitification 101 is make it difficult to leave and trap you via inconvenience.
If you are on Lemmy, theres very high probability that you also have the technical abilities required to self host Vaultwarden and stop relying on a greedy company for your most critical aspect.
I could but I don’t want. Self hosting something this important? I can’t login to any website without this software, including my email. It’s super critical.
3-2-1 backups guys
Then again, if you can do that, why not just use pass
There seems to be only one Android client, and it’s been archived on Github. I kinda need an android client for a password manager to be usable.
Are the clients usable or is the user experience more like KeePass (i.e. bad)?
I have Vaultwarden, it works with the web app and browser extensions. But is there a vaultwarden specific android app? I know technically I can use the Bitwarden app. But sometimes they update the Bitwarden app too fast for all the changes to translate into Vaultwarden and then im kinda forced to use the web app.
The web app is just a minor inconvenience to me so I continue to use it. Just wondering if there is an easier Vaultwarden specific solution for android.
Yeah, keyguard is pretty good
Then we will shit … the enshitification exodus goes on
Yes because using a different then normies app also means technical skills. In fact, haven’t your PhD diploma came along when you signed up for your Lemmy account?
Fantastic. I’m tired of having to change password managers. DashLane, Keepass, LastPass, etc., they all end up shooting their own foot somehow.
What happened to keepass?
It has become Keep Ass.
Cool quip, doesn’t answer the question
I really don’t want to have to switch password managers again.
Don’t even know where i’d switch.
Proton -> I already use Proton suite and I like the seperation, the 2 password option doesn’t work for me either. I just need a seperate password.
Keepass -> I use quite a few devices and the sync just seems like a nightmare…
Any other options? For now i’ll stick as BW is still great but will start exploring others.
I’ve been using Dashlane for years and love it
Keepass X Syncthing
syncthing runs on everything and is easy to configure.
Maybe it’s changed in the year since I tried but I absolutely could not get syncthings to work on android
But thousands of people have it working just fine. Not calling you out but it does work very well. Did you follow a step by step guide? I know websearch makes it hard to learn new tech things these days.
Just keep in mind, set up a default folder and file (filename.kdbx) to share on one device, add Remote Device (QR code helps there), go to Sharing Tab and select Default Folder. If the Default Folder isn’t ticked on both devices in the Sharing Tab on each, nothing happens. When you work it out, that folder can be called anything and you can get advanced with how or when it shares or which direction the data goes (think photo backup from mobile to desktop).
New Android app to use is:
https://github.com/chenxiaolong/BasicSync
Use Obtainium- https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium - to install it and keep it updated. Obtainium can update itself the same way.
Convoluted, I know, but so is relying on a company to host for you in the cloud. They just hide all the complexity behind the interface. With Syncthing, once it’s set up between all your devices (and there is a way to quickly auto accept setup once further advanced/knowledgeable), it just chugs along in the background. Changes to keepass file appear almost instantly across each device once it’s opened.
That’s not an option for iOS users.
You could use Synctrain or maybe Möbius Sync to SyncThing-sync a folder with your phone, then use Strongbox or KeePassium or any other KeePass-compatible app to work with the file?
This, or Vaultwarden, but a lot of people swear by Keepass.
If you have a Nextcloud server, you should try Passman.
I use UNIX pass utility, it’s very minimal and works for me
Just rip the bandaid off.
And go to what? What works as well / seamlessly as Bitwarden?
Keepass.
No one’s taking away my favourite bash script: https://www.passwordstore.org/
That’s quite the disappointment. Probably need to prepare to switch away from bitwarden or at least research options for open source clients for my vaultwarden backend.
Someone can correct me, but this change seems to be targeting people who are repackaging bitwarden and selling it. It does feel like we are trending the wrong direction though.
If you read their announcement carefully you’ll find things like
All current features are available in both versionsWhich strongly implies that the different versions will start to diverge over time. Then at one point they will just be like maah it’s not worth putting more work into the open source thing, we’ll focus on building new cool features yada yada yada. And this is how all the open to partly open to closed source rug pulls worked in the last years.
(If you want to do this the worst way possible like MinIO you also squash / delete the Git history the moment you announce you’re only working on closed source)
Minio also deleted the repos altogether about two weeks ago.
Yeah well, didn’t know this. I’m still running some old minio instances on my home server. Need to check if the docker images are still around otherwise I urgently need a backup plan…
Fucking hell, why didn’t they at least leave the old code available 😭
what is even out there? I pay for proton and bitwarden. but I just dont trust them
Before Bitwarden / Vaultwarden I went with Keepass (it was some fork don’t remember the exact name KeepassXC probably) synced via Nextcloud. It’s not as convenient as Bitwarden plus at least back then it didn’t support passkeys. So yeah, I don’t know what is actually out there. Honestly I don’t think it’s super urgent to start hunting for alternatives but probably we should have at least some ideas in case the Bitwarden team does some weird moves.
When Bitwarden got a meh “refresh” of the user interface and started vibe coding stuff (I’m not some super hard-line anti-AI person, but dammit, you absolutely should not vibe code security-critical apps), I switched to KeePassX. It was like coming back home! I used to use KeePass and KeePass 2, switched to Bitwarden for a long while, and while it was neat, KeePassX is just neater. (Doesn’t have cloud sync, but syncing the vault files with LocalSend is easy enough.)
I guess you mean KeepassXC, because the last release of KeepassX apparently was in 2016.
KeepassXC is also using AI, they even made a blog post about it a year ago.
https://keepassxc.org/blog/2025-11-09-about-keepassxcs-code-quality-control/
Honestly their description of use and why that use it is not concerning. I’m more concerned with their choice being copilot lol.
Yep, ChiPass is a good replacement: https://codeberg.org/ChiPass/ChiPass
Yup, I was supposed to say KeepassXC. (…I mean I probably considered using KeepassX at some point, it’s XC’s predecessor after all. But as I recall Keepass 2 worked well enough on Mono, so I didn’t need to switch.)
Also, whoopsies on XC’s AI use. At least they don’t seem to embrace it as much as Bitwarden, but still makes me go hmm.
I think all of us can just move to using Vaultwarden, it seems to fix problems even in the old free version of Bitwarden.
Yeah I’m thinking I’ll finally spin up Vaultwarden and move away from Bitwarden. I’m just hoping they develop their own apps for it
The issue is, the bitwarden app you still use is what is affected by this change.
Only if you are reselling bitwarden. The client apps are still free for personal use.
So these changes affect the client app too? If that’s the case can’t the client app be replaced?
At that point the only thing that would remain is the protocol itself
Sigh… I hope this isn’t the first move of enshitifying bitwarden. I read the comments/replies and hope this is benign but I’m now nervous
The first move was when they hired a CEO who comes from private equity. This is the second move.
I think it is the next move (not the first) in enshittifying bitwarden. I think the first move was the leadership change announced in May.
Has anyone tried AliasVault ? How’s your experience with it ?
