Firefox Lockwise

» see lockwise.firefox.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

firefox lockwise shipped to do one thing firefox itself already did most of the way. desktop firefox had a password manager. android firefox had a password manager. lockwise was the third client, a standalone mobile app that surfaced the same logins on a separate icon for users who wanted password access without opening the browser.

mozilla launched the project as "lockbox" inside test pilot on 26 july 2018, ios-only. an android version arrived in 2019. the rename to lockwise came on 26 march 2019 as the app graduated out of test pilot into the regular firefox family. the desktop side showed up the same year as the about:logins page inside firefox 70.

the pitch was reasonable in 2018 and weaker by 2021. apple and google had ramped up their own password autofill at the os level. 1password and bitwarden had taken the cross-platform power user market, and lockwise sat in a narrow band between "use the browser" and "use a real password manager" with no obvious reason to exist.

~ the record ~

~ how it ended ~

mozilla announced end of support on 14 october 2021 with a final shutdown date of 13 december 2021. users were pointed at the firefox browser itself for password management, where the about:logins page now did everything lockwise had done. existing data did not need migrating: it had always been synced through firefox sync, so it lived in the browser already.

the app stayed downloadable for a while as a zombie binary that no longer received updates. mozilla pulled it from the app stores in 2022. the android apk kept working past that, mostly because nothing in it talked to a server that could be turned off.

~ the inheritance ~

lockwise sits in a category of mozilla product retirements that look almost identical from the outside. firefox send died for similar reasons in september 2020. mozilla persona died for similar reasons in november 2016. each one launched as a separable feature, then folded back into firefox after three or four years inside a shrinking foundation budget.

the underlying password sync code lived on. about:logins inside firefox does what lockwise used to do, and firefox sync still moves credentials between devices. the brand died. the function survived.

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