bitwarden-desktop-next

A vibe-coded project investigating how the Bitwarden Rust SDK can be used to build a native desktop password manager — a slim alternative to the official Electron client, written entirely in Rust on top of iced 0.15.

The UI is hand-rolled; everything below it (crypto, auth, vault decrypt, sync) goes through the real bitwarden-* SDK crates. Treat this as an exploration, not a production app.

See docs/architecture.md for the project layout and docs/decisions.md for the rationale behind the major choices.

Running it

cargo run -p fake-data                        # Regenerate per-user SQLite + mock.json under data/
cargo run                                     # Loading screen → login

cargo run --bin packager                      # Package .app/.dmg/.msi/.deb/.pacman
cargo run -p i18n-unused                      # List Fluent keys with no `fl!`/`E()` callers

Useful dev modes:

DEV_BOTH_MENUS=1 cargo run                                            # Native + custom menus side-by-side
RUST_LOG=bitwarden_desktop_next=debug,bitwarden_core=debug cargo run  # Full SDK tracing

First-run tip: the real login command isn't wired yet (see TODO below). Run cargo run -p fake-data first to seed a local SQLite vault you can unlock.

Seeded accounts

fake-data writes three users to data/. None of these are real — passwords are hardcoded and ship in the dev binary, so don't reuse them anywhere.

Supported

• Multi-user vault unlock against a local SDK-backed SQLite store
• Cipher list / detail / edit / delete
• Send list / detail / create (in-memory)
• Password generator
• Magnify quick launcher (Ctrl+Shift+Space / Cmd+Shift+Space)
• System tray + single-instance wake-up
• Custom title-bar menus (Windows/Linux) and native muda menus (macOS)
• Light / dark theme, persisted settings (data/settings.json)
• Favicons in the vault list
• Packaging to .app / .dmg / .msi / .deb / .pacman

Linux notes

• The system tray reaches the OS via the StatusNotifierItem (SNI) D-Bus protocol. On distros that don't advertise an SNI host (vanilla GNOME, sway without waybar's tray module, etc.) services::tray::build() returns None and the tray-related settings become no-ops — this is intentional, not a bug. Add the AppIndicator GNOME extension or a tray-aware status bar to get tray support back.
• The .deb / .pacman produced by cargo run --bin packager declares libayatana-appindicator3-1 (Debian/Ubuntu) / libayatana-appindicator (Arch) as a runtime dependency so package-manager installs pull it in automatically. If you build the binary directly without packaging, install that library yourself before launching.

TODO (highlights)

Full list lives in docs/todo.md. The big ones:

• Real login command — current flow only unlocks an existing local DB seeded by fake-data
• 2FA / Registration / SSO / master-password-hint screens
• PIN unlock and biometrics (Touch ID / Windows Hello / polkit)
• SSH agent — parked until upstream V2 ships
• Browser integration, autotype, native-messaging host
• Send: swap in-memory map for the SDK's Repository<Send>, add file sends
• Right-click context menus on text inputs
• Many settings tabs are UI-only stubs that emit a "not supported yet" toast