[bitwarden] Bitwarden (rbw) extension cannot find Homebrew-installed rbw on macOS

[gormanity]

Extension name

bitwarden

Description

On Apple Silicon macOS, the Bitwarden extension reports that rbw is not installed even though it is installed through Homebrew and works correctly from Terminal.

Environment:

• macOS 26.6 (arm64)
• rbw 1.15.0
• rbw location: /opt/homebrew/bin/rbw

Terminal output:

$ command -v rbw
/opt/homebrew/bin/rbw

$ rbw --version
rbw 1.15.0

Vicinae’s GUI process has this PATH:

/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

The extension currently invokes the bare executable name with execFileAsync("rbw", ...). When /opt/homebrew/bin is absent from Vicinae’s environment, this produces ENOENT, which the extension reports as “rbw is not installed.”

Relevant source:

https://github.com/vicinaehq/extensions/blob/main/extensions/bitwarden/src/rbw.ts#L34-L49

Expected behavior: the extension should detect the standard Apple Silicon Homebrew installation at /opt/homebrew/bin/rbw.

A possible fix would be to resolve common Homebrew locations on macOS or provide an extension preference for the full rbw executable path. The preference would also support custom Homebrew prefixes and other installation methods.

Steps to reproduce

1. On an Apple Silicon Mac, install rbw with:

brew install rbw

2. Confirm that /opt/homebrew/bin/rbw runs successfully.
3. Install the Bitwarden extension from the Vicinae store.
4. Launch “Browse Bitwarden Vault.”
5. Observe the message:

rbw is not installed
Install rbw to use this extension.

Vicinae version

0.24.0 (build 2325)

[github-actions]

cc @bl4zee1g

[bl4zee1g]

How did you laubch vicinae? Not entirely sure how it sources env variables but I would assume it would find the rbw binary when killing all vicinae processes and relaunching with vicinae server

[gormanity]

I launched Vicinae using the macOS application. Its environment only contains PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin. This persists after reboots, etc.

I tried your suggestion and vicinae server will inherit the shell environment from the terminal, so it is a valid workaround and the issue is specific to the normal macOS application/login-item launch environment.

[bl4zee1g]

I never used macos in my life so I can't really help you also I don't think there's a native way to set environment variables on vicinae settings. Maybe you can put like a hardlink to /usr/bin or wherever the default directory for binaries is on macos that links to the homebrew install for now?

[gormanity]

A link under /usr/bin isn’t a viable workaround on macOS because that directory is protected by SIP and resides on the sealed, read-only System volume. A hard link also cannot cross from the Homebrew Data volume to the System volume.

Since the Vicinae declares macOS support, would you be open to adding the standard Homebrew locations (/opt/homebrew/bin/rbw and /usr/local/bin/rbw) to PATH or adding a preference for optionally specifying the app-level PATH variable? I think the preference would be the most flexible fix. Otherwise, we could do something more narrow at the extension level. I'm happy to do the heavy lifting here.