Chrome Password Manager to Bitwarden: 12 Steps [2026]

Chrome’s built-in password manager is fine for the basics: it saves a login, it fills a form, and it syncs to your Google account. But it was never built to be a security tool. It has no vault-wide breach monitoring, no secure notes or file storage, limited sharing controls for a household or a small team, and its passkey handling still trails dedicated managers. If you have spent any time this year reading about Australian data breaches, you already know why that gap matters. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey of US adults found that “41% of U.S. adults reported that they always or often wrote down their passwords” rather than relying on a manager, which tells you how much friction still exists even years after password managers became mainstream.

This tutorial walks through a full migration from Chrome’s password manager to Bitwarden, the open-source vault that keeps winning recommendations for its free tier, audited encryption, and fast release cadence. You will export your saved logins, create a properly hardened Bitwarden vault, import everything without leaving a plaintext file lying around, turn on multi-factor authentication and passkeys, and run a vault health report to catch every reused or breached password along the way. By the end you will have a working, audited setup and a repeatable checklist you can hand to family members or coworkers who are still stuck on sticky notes.

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Why Ditch Chrome’s Password Manager for Bitwarden in 2026

Chrome’s password manager is tied to a single ecosystem. If you use an iPhone with Safari, a work laptop locked to Edge, or a Linux desktop without Chrome installed, your vault does not travel with you cleanly. Bitwarden runs as a browser extension on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave and Safari, as a native desktop app on Windows, macOS and Linux, and as a mobile app on iOS and Android, all syncing through the same end-to-end encrypted vault. That portability alone is the biggest reason security teams at small Australian businesses point people toward a dedicated password manager instead of a browser’s built-in tool.

The second reason is depth of features. Chrome’s password manager checks saved passwords against known breaches in a fairly basic way, but it does not give you a dashboard for password reuse across hundreds of logins, a distinct vault for secure notes and identity documents, emergency access for a trusted contact, or admin tooling for a family or a business. Bitwarden detailed a redesigned browser extension and a desktop-app preview as part of its August 2026 product update, along with a vault action bar that lets you select multiple items at once and move them into collections, archive them, or share them with a team in bulk. Chrome’s manager has no equivalent to any of that.

Third, Bitwarden is open source and independently audited, and it offers a genuinely usable free plan with unlimited passwords across unlimited devices, which is rare among competitors. Proton Pass has moved in a similar direction: its current 1.41.1 release, listed in September 2026, still ships on a free tier with unlimited passkeys, logins and devices, which makes it a credible alternative if you want a privacy-first provider built by the same team behind Proton Mail. Dashlane, by contrast, discontinued its free plan in late 2025 and now positions itself around a paid bundle that includes a VPN and dark-web monitoring. None of this makes Chrome’s manager useless, but it does explain why migrating to a dedicated vault is worth an afternoon of your time.

If you are weighing Bitwarden against a hardware-backed approach instead, it is worth reading how Australian organisations are closing the gap between convenience and account security in our YubiKey vs 1Password vs Entra ID comparison, which covers where hardware keys fit alongside a software vault like Bitwarden rather than instead of one.

Prerequisites and Versions You Will Need

You do not need advanced technical skills for this migration, but you do need a short checklist of software, accounts and about 30 to 45 minutes of uninterrupted time. Do not rush the export-and-delete steps; that is where most people create the risk they were trying to avoid in the first place.

Requirement	Version or detail	Why you need it
Google Chrome	Any current stable release	Source of your existing saved passwords and passkeys
Bitwarden browser extension	Latest stable build from the Chrome Web Store	Primary interface for day-to-day autofill after migration
Bitwarden desktop app (optional)	Latest stable release for Windows, macOS or Linux	Needed for the Bitwarden CLI and for offline vault access
Bitwarden mobile app	Latest release for iOS or Android	Keeps passkeys and autofill working on your phone
Bitwarden account	Free or Premium tier (Premium reported at roughly AUD 30 per year)	Premium unlocks vault health reports and 5 GB of encrypted file storage
Authenticator app	Any TOTP app, or a FIDO2 hardware key	Required for multi-factor authentication on the new vault
Spare USB drive or encrypted folder	N/A	Temporary, secure holding spot for your exported CSV before deletion

Before you start, close any shared or public computer sessions signed into your Google account, and make sure you are working on a device only you control. The export step briefly creates a plaintext file of every password you own, so the physical security of the machine matters as much as the software you are about to install.

Chrome Password Manager vs Bitwarden vs 1Password: A Quick Comparison

It helps to see the feature gap in one place before you commit to the migration. The table below compares Chrome’s built-in manager against Bitwarden’s free and paid tiers, and against 1Password, whose browser extension was updated to version 8.12.41 on 7 October 2026. This is not a full market roundup; it is the narrow comparison that matters for anyone deciding whether the switch from Chrome’s manager is worth the effort.

Feature	Chrome Password Manager	Bitwarden (Free / Premium)	1Password
Unlimited passwords	Yes, Google account only	Yes, on both tiers	Yes, paid plans only
Cross-browser support	Chrome and Chromium forks only	Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Safari	Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Safari
Native desktop app	No	Yes, Windows, macOS, Linux	Yes, Windows, macOS, Linux
Open source	No	Yes	No
Self-hosting option	No	Yes (via community server projects)	No
Vault health / breach reports	Basic, built into Chrome	Premium only, full reused/weak/exposed report	Included on paid plans
Passkey support	Yes, limited to Google ecosystem	Yes, cross-platform	Yes, cross-platform
Encrypted file storage	No	5 GB on Premium	Included on paid plans
Family or business sharing	No	Yes, via organisations	Yes, via shared vaults
Approximate annual cost	Free	Free / around AUD 30 per year	Paid subscription, no free tier

Pricing and feature sets change often enough that you should always confirm current numbers on the provider’s own site before paying, but the structural gaps in Chrome’s manager (no desktop app, no file storage, no organisation-level sharing) are unlikely to close any time soon, since they fall outside what a browser vendor typically wants to build.

How Vault Storage Architecture Affects Your Migration

Not every password manager stores your vault the same way, and that difference matters once you start moving data between tools. Chrome’s manager keeps your vault tied to your Google account, encrypted, but entirely inside Google’s infrastructure. Bitwarden’s default setup is similar, storing your encrypted vault on Bitwarden’s own servers, though it is one of the few mainstream options that also offers a fully local-only mode or a self-hosted server for people who want to remove the cloud component entirely. By contrast, an app like Enpass stores nothing on its own servers at all; instead it syncs your encrypted vault through a storage provider you already control, such as iCloud or Google Drive, an architecture choice PC Mag’s 2026 comparison flags as a meaningful differentiator for privacy-conscious users.

For this migration, the architecture detail that actually matters is simpler: regardless of which vendor you land on, the baseline security bar across credible options is now fairly consistent. A 2026 review of password managers aimed at Australian businesses notes that the providers worth considering all clear the same floor, namely zero-knowledge architecture, AES-256 or XChaCha20 encryption, mandatory MFA on the vault, and native passkey storage, according to a 2026 Australian business password manager review. That baseline is exactly what Chrome’s consumer-grade manager does not fully match, since it lacks several of those controls at the vault level rather than just the account level, which is the practical reason this migration guide treats Bitwarden as the destination rather than simply staying put.

If your household or small team already runs on a specific cloud storage provider for other sensitive files, it is worth checking whether that same provider is a sensible place to keep an encrypted backup of your exported vault once the migration is done, rather than defaulting to whatever is already synced on your main computer. That is a separate decision from the password manager itself, but it closes one more gap in the chain between “my passwords are in a vault” and “my passwords are actually protected end to end.”

Step 1 and Step 2: Audit and Export Your Chrome Passwords

Open Chrome and go to Settings > Autofill and passwords > Google Password Manager. Before exporting anything, use the built-in Password Checkup tool to see how many of your saved logins are reused, weak, or already appeared in a known breach. Write down that number. You will compare it against Bitwarden’s vault health report later, and the drop in reused or exposed passwords is the clearest evidence that the migration actually improved your security rather than just moving the same risky habits to a new app.

To export, click the three-dot menu next to “Saved Passwords,” choose Export passwords, confirm your device PIN or biometric prompt, and save the resulting CSV file somewhere temporary, such as a USB drive or an encrypted folder, not your regular Downloads folder where cloud backup tools might sync it automatically. The exported file looks like this:

name,url,username,password,note
Example Bank,https://examplebank.com.au,jane.citizen,Tr0ub4dor&3,
Example Shop,https://exampleshop.com.au,[email protected],correct-horse-battery,
Streaming Service,https://examplestream.tv,jane_c,hunter22,

Every field in that file sits in plain text. There is no encryption at this stage, which is exactly why the next few steps treat the file as something to be used once and destroyed immediately, not kept as a backup.

Step 3 and Step 4: Create Your Bitwarden Vault and Install the Apps

Go to the official Bitwarden signup page and create a free account using an email address you check regularly, since it is your recovery contact point if you ever lose access to the vault. The single most important decision in this step is your master password. Bitwarden never stores it and cannot reset it for you, so choose a long passphrase rather than a short complex string. Four or five unrelated words, totalling at least 20 characters, beaten with a couple of numbers or symbols, is both easier to remember and harder to brute-force than something like “Tr0ub4dor&3”.

Once the account exists, install the Bitwarden extension for Chrome (or whichever browser you actually use day to day), the desktop app if you want offline access and the CLI, and the mobile app for your phone. On a desktop with the Bitwarden CLI installed, you can confirm the install and log in from a terminal instead of the GUI:

# Check the installed CLI version
bw --version

# Log in and unlock the vault, storing a session key for this terminal
bw login [email protected]
export BW_SESSION=$(bw unlock --raw)

# Confirm the vault is reachable and synced
bw sync
bw status

The CLI is optional for most users, but it becomes useful later for scripting vault health checks or for anyone self-hosting a Bitwarden-compatible server, which we cover in the advanced tips section.

Step 5 and Step 6: Import the CSV and Destroy the Plaintext File

Inside the Bitwarden web vault or desktop app, go to Tools > Import Data, select “Chrome (csv)” as the source format, and point it at the file you exported earlier. Bitwarden’s import tooling expanded meaningfully through its August and September 2026 product updates: it now supports direct imports from Keeper Password Manager without requiring a separate export file first, and it added compatibility with KeePass .kdbx files and Delinea .csv or .xml exports, which matters if you are consolidating more than one old vault into Bitwarden at the same time, not just moving away from Chrome.

After the import finishes, open the vault and spot-check ten or so entries against the original CSV to confirm usernames, URLs and passwords all landed correctly. Only once you have verified the import should you delete the plaintext file. Moving it to the Trash is not enough, because the underlying data can often still be recovered. On Linux or macOS, securely overwrite the file before deleting it:

# macOS / Linux: overwrite the file three times, then remove it
shred -u -z -n 3 chrome_passwords.csv

# If "shred" isn't available on macOS, use this instead
rm -P chrome_passwords.csv

On Windows, use the built-in cipher tool to wipe free space after deleting the file, which overwrites the sectors the file previously occupied:

# Windows: delete the file, then wipe free space on the drive it was on
del chrome_passwords.csv
cipher /w:C:\Users\YourName\Downloads

Finally, go back into Chrome’s Password Manager settings and delete the saved passwords there too, once you are fully confident the Bitwarden vault is complete and correct. Leaving the old copies in Chrome defeats part of the point of migrating, since it leaves a second, less-protected copy of every credential sitting around.

Step 7: Lock Down Your Vault With Multi-Factor Authentication

A password manager is only as strong as the one master password protecting it, which is why the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s guidance on this category of software centres heavily on enabling multi-factor authentication on the vault itself, not just on the individual accounts stored inside it. In Bitwarden, go to Settings > Security > Two-step Login and enable an authenticator app (TOTP), a FIDO2 hardware security key, or both. A hardware key is the stronger option because it cannot be phished the way a six-digit code can, but a TOTP app is a reasonable baseline if you do not already own a key.

Do not skip generating and saving the recovery codes Bitwarden shows you during this step. Store them somewhere separate from your phone, such as a printed copy in a locked drawer or a secure note in a different, already-trusted vault. If your phone is lost or reset at the same time your master password is forgotten, those codes are the only way back into your own vault, since Bitwarden’s zero-knowledge architecture means there is no backdoor for support staff to use on your behalf.

If you already own a hardware security key for work or for another service, register it with Bitwarden now rather than treating it as optional. A hardware key protects against phishing in a way a six-digit TOTP code cannot, because the key checks that it is talking to the genuine Bitwarden domain before it will respond, whereas a human can be tricked into typing a TOTP code into a fake login page without noticing anything wrong. If you are deciding whether to buy a hardware key specifically for this purpose, or wondering how that decision interacts with workplace identity systems rather than personal vaults, that is exactly the trade-off covered in more depth in the comparison mentioned earlier in this guide.

Step 8: Set Up Passkeys for Passwordless Logins

Passkeys replace a password and a second factor with a single cryptographic key pair tied to your device and verified by biometrics or a PIN. Bitwarden can both generate new passkeys for sites that support them and store passkeys you already created elsewhere, including ones Chrome previously saved to its own passkey store. From the Bitwarden extension, open any login item, choose Add passkey if the site offers it, and follow the on-screen prompt the same way you would in Chrome.

The catch is that passkeys saved inside Chrome’s own passkey manager do not automatically transfer to Bitwarden; most major platforms still require you to re-register a passkey from inside the new manager rather than exporting one from the old one, largely for security reasons around how the private key is bound to its original storage. Budget extra time for any site where you rely heavily on passkey login, and keep your password as a fallback until you have confirmed the new passkey works end to end.

Step 9 and Step 10: Turn Off Chrome Autofill and Run a Vault Health Report

With your vault imported and secured, go back into Chrome’s settings and switch off “Offer to save passwords” and “Auto Sign-in,” so Chrome stops prompting you to save new logins into its own store once Bitwarden is handling autofill. Leaving both tools active causes the duplicate-prompt problem that frustrates most people in the first week after switching, where every new signup triggers two separate “save this password” pop-ups.

Next, open Bitwarden’s Vault Health Reports (a Premium feature) and run the Reused, Weak and Exposed Passwords reports in sequence. This is the step that actually proves the migration was worth doing: compare the count of flagged items against the number you noted from Chrome’s Password Checkup earlier. If the CLI route suits you better, a simple script can flag any item whose password appears more than once across your exported vault:

# Export an encrypted copy of your vault, then check for reused passwords
bw export --format encrypted_json --output vault_backup.json

python3 - <<'EOF'
import json
from collections import Counter

with open("vault_backup.json") as f:
    data = json.load(f)

passwords = [
    item["login"]["password"]
    for item in data.get("items", [])
    if item.get("login") and item["login"].get("password")
]

counts = Counter(passwords)
reused = {pw: n for pw, n in counts.items() if n > 1}
print(f"Total logins checked: {len(passwords)}")
print(f"Reused passwords found: {len(reused)}")
EOF

Note that the encrypted export still requires your vault to be decrypted locally to run this kind of check, so only ever do this on a device you trust, and delete the export file afterward the same way you destroyed the Chrome CSV earlier.

Step 11 and Step 12: Organise With Collections and Confirm the Migration

Bitwarden’s vault action bar, added as part of its 2026 redesign, lets you select multiple vault items at once and move them into collections, which function like folders but with their own sharing permissions if you later add family members or coworkers to an organisation. Spend ten minutes grouping items into sensible buckets, such as Banking, Shopping, Work and Streaming, so the vault stays navigable as it grows past the few hundred entries most people end up importing from years of Chrome autofill.

Finally, confirm the migration is genuinely complete: check that Chrome’s saved password list is empty, that the Bitwarden extension is pinned to your browser toolbar for fast access, that autofill works correctly on at least three different sites including one banking or financial login, and that your MFA and recovery codes are stored somewhere other than the same phone that holds your authenticator app. Only then should you consider the switch finished rather than half-done.

Common Pitfalls When Migrating Password Managers

Leaving the exported CSV in a synced folder. If your Downloads folder syncs to OneDrive, iCloud or Google Drive, a plaintext password export can end up copied to the cloud before you have deleted it. Export to a USB drive or an offline folder instead.
Setting a short, “clever” master password. A password manager’s entire security model depends on one credential you memorise yourself. A short password with substitutions (like “P@ssw0rd1”) is far weaker than a long passphrase, no matter how clever the substitutions feel.
Skipping the spot-check after import. CSV imports occasionally mis-map a username or URL field, especially for sites with unusual login forms. Checking ten entries takes two minutes and avoids a locked-out account later.
Forgetting to disable Chrome’s own autofill. Running two password managers at once causes duplicate save prompts and, in some cases, Chrome overwriting a password you just updated in Bitwarden.
Storing MFA recovery codes only as a screenshot on the same phone. If that phone is lost, stolen, or wiped, the recovery codes are gone along with it. Print them or store them in a separate, already-trusted system.
Assuming passkeys transfer automatically. As covered in Step 8, most sites require re-registering a passkey inside the new manager rather than migrating the old one directly.
Not telling family members who share logins. If you share a streaming or utility account with someone else, moving it out of Chrome without telling them can lock them out the next time they need to log in on a new device.

Troubleshooting Guide: Fixing the Most Common Bitwarden Migration Errors

Most problems during this migration fall into a short, predictable list, and almost none of them point to a genuine security flaw in either Chrome or Bitwarden. They are nearly always configuration mismatches between the two tools, a formatting quirk in the exported CSV, or a setting on your phone that defaults to the wrong autofill provider after installing a new app. Work through the table below before assuming something is broken at a deeper level, and resist the temptation to re-import the same file repeatedly without checking the actual cause first, since a repeated import is the single most common way people end up with duplicate vault entries that then need manual cleanup.

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
CSV import shows “0 items imported”	Wrong source format selected in the import tool	Re-select “Chrome (csv)” specifically rather than a generic CSV option
Some logins show a blank username field	Chrome sometimes exports an empty username for auto-generated or social logins	Manually fill the username field for those specific items after import
Bitwarden extension won’t autofill on a banking site	The site uses non-standard login form fields or runs in an iframe	Use Bitwarden’s inline menu icon inside the field, or copy/paste from the extension popup
Duplicate save prompts appear for every new signup	Chrome’s own password saving is still enabled	Turn off “Offer to save passwords” in Chrome settings, as covered in Step 9
Locked out after a master password typo during setup	No account recovery exists for a forgotten master password by design	Use your saved recovery code, or start a new vault if no recovery code exists yet
Vault Health Reports tab is missing	Reports are a Premium-only feature	Upgrade to Premium, or use the CLI script in Step 9/10 as a free alternative
Mobile app won’t offer autofill	Bitwarden is not set as the default autofill provider on the phone	Set Bitwarden as the autofill service in the phone’s system settings, not just inside the app
KeePass or Keeper import fails partway through	Unsupported characters or a corrupted export file	Re-export from the source manager, check for special characters in notes fields, and retry
Passkey won’t register on a supported site	Browser or OS-level passkey settings conflict with the extension	Confirm Bitwarden, not Chrome, is set as the default passkey provider in browser settings

Advanced Tips: Self-Hosting, the Bitwarden CLI and Business Controls

If you want full control over where your encrypted vault data physically lives, Bitwarden’s open-source design supports self-hosting through community server implementations. A minimal self-hosted setup using Docker Compose looks roughly like this:

version: "3"
services:
  vault:
    image: vaultwarden/server:latest
    restart: always
    environment:
      DOMAIN: "https://vault.yourdomain.com.au"
      SIGNUPS_ALLOWED: "true"
    volumes:
      - ./vw-data:/data
    ports:
      - "8080:80"

Self-hosting is not for everyone. It adds patching, backup and uptime responsibilities that most individuals and small teams are better off leaving to Bitwarden’s own cloud infrastructure, but it is a legitimate option for technically confident users or organisations with strict data residency requirements, since storing encrypted vault data on infrastructure similar to S3-compatible object storage for backups is a common pattern once the vault server itself is running. Before committing to this route, weigh the ongoing maintenance load honestly: a self-hosted vault that falls behind on security patches is arguably worse than staying on a well-maintained managed service, since you have taken on the operational burden without necessarily having the time to keep up with it.

For businesses rather than individuals, Bitwarden’s 2026 updates introduced a Privileged Controls feature, currently in private preview, which extends privileged-access-management capabilities into the same platform used for everyday employee credentials. That is a meaningfully different product tier to what an individual user needs for a personal Chrome-to-Bitwarden migration, but it is worth knowing about if you are evaluating Bitwarden for a workplace rollout rather than just your own accounts.

Whichever route you take, make sure your vault export backups, like your Chrome passwords CSV earlier, never sit unencrypted in general-purpose cloud storage. If you already use a cloud backup provider for other files, our comparison of Backblaze, IDrive and Acronis covers which of those services support client-side encryption suitable for sensitive exports like this one.

Complete Working Project: A Script to Validate Your Export Before Import

To tie the whole migration together, here is a small, self-contained Python script that checks a Chrome CSV export for the most common problems (missing passwords, duplicate rows, and obviously weak passwords) before you ever import it into Bitwarden. Save it as validate_export.py and run it against your exported file first.

import csv
import sys
from collections import Counter

COMMON_WEAK = {"123456", "password", "qwerty", "111111", "letmein"}

def validate(path):
    rows = []
    with open(path, newline="", encoding="utf-8") as f:
        reader = csv.DictReader(f)
        for row in reader:
            rows.append(row)

    total = len(rows)
    missing_password = [r for r in rows if not r.get("password")]
    passwords = [r["password"] for r in rows if r.get("password")]
    duplicates = {pw: n for pw, n in Counter(passwords).items() if n > 1}
    weak = [r for r in rows if r.get("password", "").lower() in COMMON_WEAK]

    print(f"Total rows: {total}")
    print(f"Rows missing a password: {len(missing_password)}")
    print(f"Distinct reused passwords: {len(duplicates)}")
    print(f"Obviously weak passwords found: {len(weak)}")

    if missing_password or weak:
        print("\nReview these rows manually before importing:")
        for r in missing_password + weak:
            print(f"  - {r.get('name', 'unknown')} ({r.get('url', 'no url')})")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        print("Usage: python3 validate_export.py chrome_passwords.csv")
        sys.exit(1)
    validate(sys.argv[1])

Run it with python3 validate_export.py chrome_passwords.csv before you import, fix any flagged rows directly in Chrome’s password manager (not in the CSV itself, since re-exporting is safer than hand-editing plaintext credentials), re-export, and then proceed to the import step. This single check catches the two most common sources of a messy migration: rows with no password at all, usually from sites where Chrome only saved a username, and passwords reused across several accounts, which is exactly the habit a password manager is supposed to break.

Once the import is clean, your end-to-end project is complete: a Chrome export, a validated CSV, a Bitwarden vault with MFA and passkeys enabled, a vault health report with a lower reused-password count than you started with, and a securely destroyed plaintext file. That is a genuinely finished migration, not a half-done one where two password managers are quietly fighting each other in the background. For broader context on why Australian organisations are tightening this exact class of credential hygiene in 2026, the aftermath of incidents like the Oracle Health data breach affecting nearly 20 million people is a useful reminder of what is at stake when stored credentials are left exposed or unmanaged.

If you manage this process for more than one household member, keep a private checklist of which accounts were migrated and which are still pending, since staggered migrations (where some logins live in Chrome and others in Bitwarden for a week or two) are the most common source of confusion reported in the early stages of a switch. A consistent, documented rollout, even an informal one, closes that gap faster than trying to remember it from memory. For broader guidance on account security practices generally, see our main cybersecurity coverage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Bitwarden really free, and what do I lose by not paying for Premium?

Bitwarden’s free tier includes unlimited passwords across unlimited devices, which covers the core migration in this guide. Premium, reported at roughly AUD 30 per year, adds the Vault Health Reports used in Step 9/10, 1 GB of encrypted file storage, and priority support. Most individuals can complete the migration on the free tier and decide about Premium afterward.

How long does the full migration actually take?

Budget 30 to 45 minutes for a typical personal account with 50 to 150 saved logins. Most of that time goes to the spot-check after import and to re-registering passkeys individually, since those cannot be batch-processed.

Is it safe to export my passwords to a CSV file first?

It is safe as a brief, necessary step, not as something to leave sitting around. Export to an offline location, import immediately, verify the import, then securely delete the file using the methods in Step 5/6. Never store the CSV in a folder that syncs automatically to cloud storage.

Can I keep using Chrome’s autofill alongside Bitwarden?

Technically yes, but it causes duplicate save prompts and occasional conflicts where Chrome overwrites a password you just changed through Bitwarden. Disabling Chrome’s own password saving, as covered in Step 9, avoids the problem entirely.

What happens to passkeys I already saved in Chrome?

They stay in Chrome’s own passkey store and generally do not transfer directly to Bitwarden. For most supported sites you will need to register a new passkey inside Bitwarden, which is a short process but has to be done site by site.

Does Bitwarden work the same way on iPhone and Android?

Mostly yes. Both platforms support Bitwarden as a system-level autofill and passkey provider, but you have to explicitly set it as the default in the phone’s own settings menu, not just install the app, or autofill will not trigger.

Should I self-host Bitwarden instead of using its cloud service?

Only if you are comfortable maintaining server patching, backups and uptime yourself. For most individuals and small teams, Bitwarden’s own cloud hosting is the simpler and more reliable choice; self-hosting mainly suits technically confident users or organisations with specific data residency requirements.

What if I get locked out of my Bitwarden vault?

Bitwarden cannot reset a forgotten master password, by design, since it never has access to it. Your only way back in is the recovery code generated when you enabled multi-factor authentication in Step 7, which is why that code needs to be stored somewhere other than the device you normally use to unlock the vault.