SailWarden is an unofficial native Bitwarden client for Sailfish OS. It is currently in beta and requires Sailfish OS 4.5 or greater. This app has near one-to-one feature parity with the official Bitwarden apps. That means most functions you know and love from Android or iOS should be available here with a few exceptions that aren’t available on Sailfish, like autofill or syncing with authenticator.
I’ve tested this pretty extensively with both official Bitwarden and Vaultwarden but like with any beta software, I’m sure there is a bug or two. If you have any issues, feel free to report it here and please try to keep conversation on topic.
No Extra Requirements: Standalone application. There is no need to install any extras like Bitwarden CLI or NPM.
Secure: Application is sandboxed and all settings are stored using Sailfish OS’s secure storage.
Full Vault Support: View, edit, search, and manage your Logins, Secure Notes, Cards, Identities, and SSH Keys.
Password Generator: Create secure passwords, passphrases, and email aliases.
Organizations and Collections: Move secrets into Organizations and add/remove them from Collections.
Bitwarden Send: Create and share secure text or file Sends with support for custom expiration and access counts.
Biometrics: Optional screen locking with biometrics (fingerprint) or PIN codes.
Device Login: Grant access to your Bitwarden vault from another device or vice versa
SSO Support: Support for single-sign on accounts.
Vaultwarden Support: Full support for Vaultwarden self-hosted instances.
Multilanguage Support: Available in: English, Finnish, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Vietnamese, and Simplified Chinese.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q - Why did you make this app?
A - Bitwarden is one of the most important applications on my phone and without it, Sailfish could never be the phone I use daily so, I decided to make one. It turned out pretty well, so I thought I’d share it with the Sailfish community to help grow the ecosystem. Hopefully somebody finds it useful as well.
Q - Is an “unofficial” Bitwarden client safe?
A - Well, I know it is because I made it, but you should always exercise caution and use your best judgement. A few things you can try to help put your mind at ease:
Since they’re free, use a test Bitwarden account.
Use the emulator - it’s just a few clicks to try it out without installing on your phone.
Monitor network traffic - you can check your router or DNS requests to see if it is making any calls to any non-bitwarden (or vaultwarden, if using self-hosted) addresses. The only time you’ll see it make a request anywhere else is when you click the feedback link in the about section.
Backup your vault secrets to a file so you can restore them should anything go wrong.
Q - I still don’t trust it!
A - That is completely fair. If you don’t feel comfortable using it, don’t use it. Thanks to the Android compatibility layer, you can use the official android Bitwarden client.
Q - What permissions are required?
A -
Internet to communicate with Bitwarden
User Directories to access files for “Send” and for the import/export vault feature.
Secrets to store your information securely
Q - Does the import overwrite or reconcile existing vault items?
A - No, the import is strictly additive. It should never delete or modify existing items. Please backup your secrets before using this feature though because it is new and needs more testing. The official apps require you to do this through the web vault and do not have this functionality in their mobile apps.
Q - What other features do you have planned?
A - The one thing I’d like to add is support for multiple accounts but if you have any requests or suggestions use the feedback link in the about section within settings.
Notes
Translations: Every language besides English is machine translated so if you notice a mistake or would like to help translate, or, request a language - please use the feedback link within the app.
Fingerprint Reader: I don’t have a physical sailfish phone which means I’m not able to test the fingerprint reader. If you have issues with it, please use the feedback link within the app or let me know here.
Unfortunately, as soon as you start the app, and grant it the permissions it asks for, it immediately gets itself in a doom loop. You cannot do anything but close it (and even that is difficult because as soon as you cancel or confirm the ‘sailfish secrets’ message it just comes up again).
Always great to have important native apps! I also personally need Bitwarden quite often and it is always much more pleasant to use native apps over android variants
Just in case you didn’t know, there is also Bitsailor as native Bitwarden app: BitSailor support thread . I mention this only in case you would like to join forces with @Rikudou_Sennin, I imagine it to be always better have multiple devs working on something. But of course everyone can do how they want, no intention to pressure in any way
I wanted to ask if it was vibe coded? If it was planned to release the source code or how one could help improving the translations?
I could not run it and it is uninstalled for now until the developer comes forward with it being AI generated code or not. I think this is one of those apps I want coded by humans and I would appreciate it being published in the app description over at OpenRepos.
@Steve_Everett Thank you for the report - I just released 0.2 on openrepos that will hopefully fix that issue. Problem is that I only have the emulator and there are some differences between the physical devices that are hard to account for. I pretty much don’t know it is a problem until you guys with real phones tell me.
Unfortunately, it is extremely limited in functionality and quite slow. If you check the video I posted in the link above, I think it took me about 1 minute 45 seconds to get into a secret from clicking the app. I just could never see myself using that on a day-to-day basis.
It would seem its developer has become my online stalker who follows me around to different threads trying to pick fights with me. I’m too old for online fights though so I hope he will soon realize he is wasting his time.
For all those reasons, I could never trust it with my master password, so I made this.
@frankps you can read a bit about me in my plex app thread if you’d like but I’m a private person. Not everyone wants to be famous, and I already make enough money at my day job that I don’t need to make money off apps like this. If you prefer, use BitSailor but beware of point #1 above.
I’m sorry, but I don’t get how that answer relates to anything @frankps has asked?
He did not ask about your personal biography, but:
Is this app vibe-coded?
Do you plan to release the source?
How (if at all) could one help with translating the app?
Especially the first two questions I’m also interested in. And a fully avoidand non-answer like this feel a little bit iffy … like you’re trying to hide something.
It is puzzling, I thought it was published on OPENrepos because the source code is publicly available for everyone to at least inspect. Noone cares about being famous I thought this was just a common courtesy. Anyway your apps really look clean on the screenshots but that is all I can say.
I think you’re confusing OpenRepos with Chum - chum is open source only to my knowledge. OpenRepos allows either hence why my app is there.
Go read the plex thread, I explain my job and that I’m human.
If that isn’t good enough for you, don’t use the app. Frankly, I’d rather spend my time supporting folks that have a little faith in my apps and don’t make demands of me.
Unfortunately it still doesn’t work. I can get as far as putting my email address, but then the same ‘Sailfish Secrets’ message comes up. If you cancel it just comes up again, and again, continually looping. If you confirm you then get a message that the app is not responding (do you want to wait or close). Closing the app works … Ish. It goes back minimized to the app cover with ‘Locked’ in the middle. Waiting, well waits … And then tbe app not responding message comes up again, and again, etc.
Looks like the app gets stuck waiting for something to happen, but it never does.
I did not mean it in a confronting matter but whatever.
By the way sailfish secrets can be used even in emulator so your explanation with the phones and emulator differences is not valid.
Do I understand you correctly that you will not make this app open source?
This is the kind of app where you really need to trust it, unlike plex app for example.
I think he does not completely understand how most of us are thinkerers that what to know more about certain apps. There are reason not to run a password manager with a unknown sourcecode.
He is not the software vendor it self…
So yeah trust me i am a engineer and know what i am doing…
On the latest version I can now login and create, view, edit passwords, etc, but everytime you edit or change something, or change a setting you firstly get the Sailfish Secrets system pop-up to authorise or cancel, and then after that yet another, different, system pop-up asking you to confirm what you have just authorised.
P.S. I think it would be a good idea to publish your source code. If you do many more people will trust and use your app and benefit from it. The vast majority of users (me included) are not going to trawl through the source code, but its a perception thing more than anything else.
Was that version 0.2? I’ve released 2 more versions to fix issues that people have reported.
0.3 I believe should fix that prompt issue you described.
0.4 should fix issues with detecting if your device has a fingerprint reader and if not, disable biometrics as an option but I left 0.3 just in case I broke something.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
As far as open source - it really depends on the community. So far, based on how people are being very disrespectful and accusing me of using an LLM to reply, not leaning that way. People on openrepos have been great. That honestly surprised me, you’d think the community would be the same people both places but seemingly not?
I do appreciate you being respectful vs how others have been.
e.g. @Kanthal I’ve already pre-ordered a jolla phone, do you not know they are on backorder? I spent 700 USD on it but it won’t arrive until September, not only that, but I’m in the USA so I don’t even know if Jolla will ship it to me. It let me order, I emailed them about it like 3 weeks ago but haven’t got a response yet but way to go, jumping to conclusions. Another kind user on here has offered to ship me an old phone of his if I’ll pay shipping from Germany. I may take him up on his offer.
@angelfury I can’t enable device lock on the emulator. If you know how to do that, I’m all ears.
The paranoia that AI has created in today’s culture is crazy. People are seeing AI behind every corner while barely understanding how it works.
If folks really think you can go say “AI make me a 1 to 1 bitwarden app for sailfish” and out pops this on the other end, I’d suggest you go do it and release it as open source yourself.
