Let’s face it: Bitwarden may be one of the
best password managers out there, but it’s never been the prettiest. Its Android app is as barebones as it gets, with an outdated design that doesn’t follow the latest
Material You guidelines anymore. That’s about to change. Bitwarden has announced that it will soon launch a fully redesigned app for Android and iOS, based on native code that is accompanied by a much-needed facelift.
The announcement comes as part of a
Reddit post from a Bitwarden developer,
spotted by Caschys Blog. In it, the company describes that it’s currently using Microsoft’s Xamarin framework, which allows it to create a single codebase for both Android and iOS. In the past, this approach made it possible to ship features faster, but eight years after adopting this approach, some roadblocks have popped up. For one, the developer admits that it “doesn’t ‘feel native’” and uses up more resources on devices than comparable solutions. Microsoft is also making some drastic changes to the framework, complete with a rebrand to MAUI, which “has been a subpar experience for us.”
Thanks to more experience acquired by the development team, Bitwarden made the decision to transition away from the Microsoft framework in favor of native apps on both Android and iOS. This also allows Bitwarden to take advantage of new platform features much faster, like the recent introduction of passkeys on Android and iOS, which still aren’t supported by Bitwarden on mobile.
The team expects that the new Bitwarden experience will be ready in a few months. Since Bitwarden wanted to support passkeys as soon as possible, the team developed an updated app based on Microsoft's new MAUI framework as a stopgap solution. The developer describes it as a complete rewrite under the hood, though with that version, you won’t see any visual tweaks. It should be available shortly, with the company “nearing the completion of that project.”
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