Everyone needs a password manager – and these days they’re ten-a-penny, offering most of the core functionality you need from easy secure password management and generation to integration into your browser and ability to sync across multiple devices.

What makes Bitwarden worthy of your attention then? For us, the fact it’s open-source is a major attraction. That means its code is transparent and easily accessible, but the company also uses professional auditors to reveal weaknesses for it to fix. There are paid solutions for both families (just $1/month) and businesses to help fund it, but ultimately all the major functionality is completely free.

Crucially, Bitwarden seems to have the security aspects right too: your vault is synced between devices over the cloud, but using end-to-end 256-bit AES encryption that deliberately prevents Bitwarden or anyone who tried to compel it to open up your vault. You can also enable 2FA for additional security.

It works across a wide range of devices and platforms. The above link installs the standalone Bitwarden app on your mobile, which contains all the functionality you need to manage (including adding, editing and deleting) your passwords and other vault content.

If you’re running a supported version of your mobile OS (iOS 10 or Android 8 or later), then you can take advantage of autofill improvements to be able to input login details direct from the keyboard instead of having to manually copy and paste them from Bitwarden to your browser. iOS users can enable this from Settings > Passwords & Accounts > AutoFill Passwords; Android users can go to Tools > AutoFill Service – note the feature is more widely supported in Android 9.

This revolutionises the way Bitwarden works on your mobile device - to prevent Bitwarden prompting you to enter your master password each time you invoke the autofill feature, take advantage of its support for logging in using a four-digit pin rather than your full password. Hopefully in a future version users will be able to set longer pins if they wish.