How long does the Vaultwarden app keep working on a phone if the server is off for a week?

It keeps working for the whole week, and longer, if the Bitwarden app was already synced and its timeout action is Lock rather than Log out. There is no seven-day cutoff. The phone holds an encrypted copy of the vault. You unlock it with the master password or with biometrics that unlock that local copy. You can read passwords and generate TOTP codes. You cannot sync, you cannot log in from a fresh install, and a timeout set to Log out will strand you until Vaultwarden is back.

The server being off is not the same as the app being logged out. People conflate them the week the mini PC is unplugged, then wipe the app trying to “reconnect,” and that wipe is what actually ends access. The vault was on the phone the entire time.

What still works offline

The official Bitwarden apps, pointed at your Vaultwarden server, store the vault locally after a successful sync. Locking the app throws away the unlocked key, not the database. Unlocking derives the key from your master password, or uses a biometric that was allowed to wrap that key, and decrypts what is already on the device. None of that asks Vaultwarden. A week of a powered-off server does not age the file out. A month does not either, if the phone keeps the app’s data.

TOTP codes stored in the vault are local math. The secret is in the item, the clock is the phone’s clock, and the code does not need the server or the original website’s cooperation beyond the clock being roughly right. If the phone’s time is sane, you can still sign into the accounts whose second factor lives in the vault. That is the point of having the codes there instead of only in a push notification that needs a network. SMS and email codes are the ones that die with other people’s servers. The vault codes do not.

Copying a password into another app works. Autofill works if the operating system still allows the Bitwarden autofill service while the app is locked and then unlocked. What does not work is anything that writes back. A new login you create on the phone may sit unsynced, and depending on the app version it may refuse the edit until it can reach the server. Do not count on creating items during the outage. Count on reading the ones you already had. If you must record a new password, write it down and enter it when the server returns. An edit that existed only in a queue you cannot see is how a password gets lost twice.

The setting that ends the week early

Vault timeout and timeout action are different. Timeout decides when the app locks: immediately, a few minutes, on restart. Action decides what lock means. Lock keeps the local vault and asks for the master password or biometrics. Log out deletes the session and, in practice, the usable local copy. The next open has to authenticate to the server. The server is off. You are out, even though the outage was only a reboot you would have survived on Lock.

Check this before you need it. Open the app’s settings and read the action. If it says Log out, change it to Lock if this phone is a device you trust. Log out is the right action on a shared computer. It is the wrong action on the phone in your pocket that is supposed to survive the homelab being unplugged. Biometric unlock does not save you from a logout. Biometrics unlock a local vault. They do not create one from nothing, and they do not speak to a server that is down.

Reinstalling the app, clearing its storage, or “logging out to fix the sync error” is the other early end. A sync error for a week is the expected error. The icon spins, the app complains it cannot reach the server, and the vault you already unlocked is still there. Leave it. Do not delete the account from the phone to add it again. Adding it again is a login, and a login needs Vaultwarden. The repair is to turn the server back on, then pull to refresh. Until then, dismiss the error and use the vault.

What a week offline will not do

It will not sync a password you changed on a laptop that could still reach the server, because the phone could not. If some clients are on the LAN and the phone is not, or the server is truly off for everyone, nobody syncs. If the server is off, the laptop is in the same boat as the phone, using whatever it last saved. When the server returns, the clients sync. Conflicts are rare if you did not edit the same item in two places offline. If you did, look at the item. Do not assume the phone’s copy won.

Sends, emergency access, organization invites, and attachment downloads you never opened are server features. A send link will not load. An attachment you never cached will not open. The password fields and the notes you have already viewed are the reliable part. If a critical attachment only lives on the server, a week offline is a week without it. Download the thing you would need in an outage, or accept that it is not part of the offline vault.

A second device that has never logged in cannot join the outage and magically have the vault. Your partner’s phone has a vault only if it synced before the server died. A brand-new phone has nothing. This is why “the app works offline” is not a backup of Vaultwarden. The phone is a cache for a person who already logged in. The server’s data directory, backed up with restic or whatever you actually tested, is the vault. A week of the server being off is survivable for daily logins. A dead disk, with no backup and no phone that synced, is not this question. Do not let the phone’s offline mode talk you out of backing up the container.

The phone can fail without the server failing

iOS and Android can evict app data under storage pressure, and a restore of the phone from a backup is not the same as the Bitwarden database still being the one you synced last Tuesday. If the operating system offloaded the app, the first launch may demand a login. That login needs the server, and you will experience it as “Vaultwarden died after a week” when the server was up the whole time or down for an unrelated reason. Before a long outage you care about, open the app, confirm it unlocks, and do not let the OS offload it. On a phone that is always deleting apps you never open, open this one.

The master password is the other single point, and the offline week does not relax it. Biometrics are a convenience on top of a password you must still know. If you have not typed the master password in a year because Face ID always worked, a week of a flaky sensor or a reboot that demands the password is the week you learn you do not remember it. Type it once while the server is healthy. The hint is not a copy. A hint that only makes sense to you is fine. A hint that is the password is a note on the lock screen. Neither hint contacts Vaultwarden. The server cannot reset a master password it never knew in recoverable form. Offline or online, a forgotten master password is a new vault, not a waiting game.

Clock and travel matter for TOTP more than for passwords. A phone set to manual time, or a timezone mess after a flight, will mint codes the website rejects. The vault is fine. The six digits are wrong. Set the phone to automatic time before you blame the item. Password fields do not have this problem. They are stored text. They work on a wrong clock. If a login fails, try the password alone before you rotate it. Rotating it while the server is off means the new password exists in your head and the old one is what every other device will sync later. You will lock yourself out of the account with a password the vault will overwrite when it comes back.

Who should change one setting

If this phone is yours, set the timeout action to Lock, unlock it once while the server is still on so the local copy exists, and then stop worrying about a seven-day timer that is not there. If the phone is shared or easily lost, Log out is safer and you are choosing to need the server. That is a reasonable choice. It is a bad choice to make by default and discover during the outage. The app will keep showing you passwords for as long as it still has the database and you still have the master password. The server can stay off until you want sync back. Do not log out to hurry it.