Create Bitwarden custom fields in a few clicks

Logging into most websites is simple: enter a username, enter a password, and that’s it. But sometimes logins require more than that — a PIN for a company portal, a domain field for network access, a checkbox confirming agreement to terms, or a security question standing between a user and their account. Standard vault entries aren't built for these extra steps. That's where custom fields come in.

Custom fields in Bitwarden allow users to store and autofill virtually any additional input a login may require, going well beyond the typical username-and-password pair. Whether it’s managing dozens of work accounts with unique secondary requirements or filling out registration forms without hunting for information, custom fields let Bitwarden adapt to the login, not the other way around.

The result is a vault that handles the full range of modern authentication. This blog walks through the process of creating custom fields in Bitwarden in just a few easy steps.

While storing a username and password with Bitwarden will fulfill the needs for most logins, there are some situations that require more information. Examples include a checkbox that must be checked to indicate agreement to the site’s terms, a text box for a required domain to log on to a network, or an employee PIN to accompany login to a company portal. Custom fields offer an elegant, simple solution to autofill for a wide range of additional entry items.

All boxes that accept user input in a webpage are known as fields, and have invisible names embedded in the page’s code. Creating a custom field hinges on capturing this name.

There are two methods for doing this:

With the context menu feature, simply right-click the field, select the Bitwarden sub-menu, then click on Copy custom field name. Bitwarden will scan the code and find the correct ID/Name for the field, then save it to the clipboard for easy pasting.

The option to manually locate the code in the HTML can help with fields that might be tricky or require additional customization.

Right-click on the field in your browser, then select Inspect. This will open a window that shows the page’s code and highlights the field within it. Find its ‘id’, ‘name’, ‘aria-label’, or ‘placeholder’ value (in that preferred order) and copy it to the clipboard.

Here are the steps for adding Bitwarden custom fields to a login:

1. In the web vault, desktop, or browser extension clients, open your vault item for editing and scroll to the bottom to find the Additional options section. Click + Add field.

2. In the Field type dropdown menu, select the type Text for simple text input; Hidden for sensitive values you want masked in your vault; or Checkbox (called Boolean on some clients) for items like checkboxes. Linked is a different type of custom field covered later.

3. In Field label, paste the name from the clipboard that was copied from either of the two steps above.

4. Add the value to autofill. For Checkbox/Boolean options, a checkbox will appear in place of a value field.

5. Save the changes. It’s good to go!

Now, when autofilled (hint: Ctrl/CMD + Shift + L), the field will be filled too, along with the username and password!

Some websites may use uncommon or unique names for a vault item's default fields, which might give autofill some trouble. The Linked custom field solves this by providing those default fields with a custom field name. Just like other custom fields, they will use the Name copied using the previous steps. For their values, they are “linked” to the item's saved Username or Password. This allows autofill to work correctly on sites where those default fields have non-standard HTML names that Bitwarden wouldn't otherwise recognize.

With Bitwarden custom fields, users can customize their vault beyond typical logins. For example, in one community case, a student user beat the crowd and quickly nabbed seats for high-demand classes before they filled up, using custom fields to fill out the class registration forms.

Expanded functions can help with field names that might vary across pages and sites. Details are available on the help page. These functions could be useful for adding a ZIP code to a stored credit card for use across pages, for example. Custom fields also support up to 5,000 characters, so RSA 4096-bit SSH keys can be stored and autofilled, though this can also be accomplished with the SSH key item type.

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