Live-sync is completely broken

[dtrhzhrhrgf435]

Hello Bitwarden-team, I recently switched to Bitwarden and tested it out but wasn't able to switch my daily workflow over to it yet. That's mainly because of a problem regarding live-synchronization capabilities seemingly unfixed for weeks and for me that states a major inconvenience preventing me from using Bitwarden fully.

So basically there are two cases I tested: I tested live-syncing with a self-hosted instance that's behind a reverse proxy. Here live-syncing isn't working at all (neither from one web instance to another, from web to mobile [tested both iOS as well as android; newest version available], mobile to web, desktop to web, desktop to mobile, etc.). I made sure that the push_notifications property in config.yml in the bwdata folder was set to true. I set up the instance via your steps documented in the TLDR-section of your guide using docker while not exposing it directly but putting it behind Apache as a reverse-proxy and configuring apache to use SSL with a LE-certificate. Note: I made sure that the websocket connection: wss://xxxx.xx/notifications/hub?access_token=xxxx was working and being resolved as I discovered an issue with that a few weeks back on my side. When looking at it via the Firefox Devtools it has the same messages transmitted over it just like the officially hosted vault when reloading and logging in, so the connection seems to generally work. The server showed no available updates but what looked strange to me was that the version displayed in the self-hosted web vault was 2.18.1 while being 2.18.2 on the official one.

To make sure it wasn't solely my fault I extensively tested it with the official vault as well. What came to surprise me was that push notifications via Google's and Apple's push messaging service were working, meaning that live-sync works incoming on mobile. But just like with self-hosted, websocket-based syncing doesn't seem to work at all with both the web vault and the desktop clients affected here too. I tested both in incognito mode as well as normal in firefox and chrome, both updated to the newest available version.

Note: I tested in the personal vault and not via organization's vault because as far as I understood from your documentation organizations don't support live-sync as of yet. I also reinstalled both mobile apps to make sure there wasn't some kind of error with registering for push messages with google or apple respectively.

I hope this description was sufficient to outline the bug/error. If there is anything I could do to further troubleshoot I'd be happy to. Also, is this error already known or have you encountered it yourself already?

Greetings

[c4539]

Hey there, I'm having the same issues with live sync on my self-hosted instance of Bitwarden where it used to work (also behind an Apache reverse proxy) as reported here: https://github.com/bitwarden/browser/issues/1539

@kspearrin Any chance you can make fixing this a priority? This really breaks one of the core features of Bitwarden.

Thanks.

[c4539]

Hey, this issue has been around for a while an nobody seems to pick it up. Is there anybody else experiencing this? I had a conversation with the Bitwarden Support in January and they had reproduced this behavior, so I guess everybody is having this issue, self-hosted and cloud based.

A fix would be very much appreciated.

[VKWL]

It might be because I am still using Catalina on the Mac and the latest IOS?

[EnigmaRaptor]

I am also experiencing failures to live-sync. Manual syncing can force the sync on my devices, but none of my devices live sync even though the sync screen indicates a successful sync in the recent past which should have updated the login information but didn't.

[VKWL]

Any update?

[jcastro]

I'm experiencing the same issue. I'm using Nginx Proxy Manager and I have enabled websockets but still it seems to not live sync

[c4539]

Hey, this bug has been around for more than a year now (even though this issue has been created later) and hasn't received any significant update ever since. This means, one of the best features of Bitwarden – Live Sync – is completely broken. I still remember the blog post from Kyle though: https://bitwarden.com/blog/live-sync/

Even worse, Push doesn't work either. So in case you add a new account on your computer, it won't show up on you mobile device for password auto fill UNTIL you open the Bitwarden App in order to get the vault synced.

Getting an update from the Bitwarden team on this would be awesome! A fix even more.

[Umiamz]

Just to add that it is still not working for self-hosted installations.

Live-sync works great on vault.bitwarden.com with the app, browser extensions and mobile apps. I recently installed the official Bitwarden (i.e. not vaultwarden) using ports 80 and 443 (so no reverse proxy in the way) and live-sync is completely non-existent. It doesn't work via websockets and nor does it work via push notifications with mobile apps.

It would be good to know if there are any plans to get this working because the supporting documentation suggests that it should.

[dwbit]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, the team is aware of the issue and working towards a resolution! 👍

[forum4cc]

Can someone confirm or deny that there is a change in the Bitwarden Unified Beta?

[c4539]

Looks much better now 🎉. Live Sync seems to be working on self-hosted Bitwarden with Desktop (MacOS) and Web. Push on iOS works, too. Browser is still not syncing automatically.

[EnigmaRaptor]

All syncing seems to be working immediately upon changes now.