Tags containing '/' no longer appear in iOS

semblance

I have a bunch of tags which function as hierarchical folders, for example:
/items/devices
/notes/health

In the macOS version of 1Password these are still visible and are rendered hierarchically in the navigation pane.

But in the iOS version of 1Password they have vanished. I am sure they were visible until recently - I think I could even navigate around the virtual 'folder' hierarchy in iOS (was there an "organize" tab or something like that?).

Now there's a "tags" tab - but it's not displaying tags that contain a '/'. It's only displaying tags that do not contain a '/'.

Any idea what happened?

---

1Password Version: 7.3
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: iOS
Sync Type: 1Password.com

AGAlumB

@semblance: I think you may be running into this issue not because your tags contain a / (after all, this is how nested tags work, and I've got a lot of them myself), but rather because those tags begin with a / -- which makes the initial tag, essentially "null", since there's nothing preceding the /. If you remove the leading / does it display as expected?

semblance

Hi @brenty - I just tried this and you are correct. If I remove the leading '/' then they appear on iOS.

However, I don't want to remove the leading '/' on all my hierarchical tags because that would make them appear all jumbled up with my other tags.

With a leading '/', alphabetical sorting makes the hierarchical tags appear at the top, and the other non-hierarchical tags below them.

This still works on macOS, and used to work on iOS.

AGAlumB

@semblance: Thanks for confirming. The / character is reserved for nested tags, so I believe the behaviour in 1Password for iOS is correct in this case. / is a tag separator, so there's no parent tag at all in your examples. But I'll bring it up with the team, since either way it needs to be consistent. Thank you for raising the issue!

ref: apple-3690

semblance

Thanks @brenty, I would like to request that there is a supported way of making nested tags appear at the top of the tag the list, so that they’re shown above the non-nested tags.

It looks like using a leading ‘/‘ only achieved that “by accident”.

But it was quite a neat accident, when it worked ;-)

Ben

It looks like using a leading ‘/‘ only achieved that “by accident”.

But it was quite a neat accident, when it worked ;-)

Heh, correct. :) You could try prefixing them with ! instead. This causes them to be listed ahead of anything that starts with an alphanumeric.

Ben

semblance

hi @Ben - yes that works, although I think "/items/devices" looked much better than "!items/devices"...

AGAlumB

That's a bit subjective, but I get your point. As I mentioned, it's something we'll evaluate. Cheers! :)

semblance

Hi, any update on this?

I am concerned that if you update the macOS app to behave like the iOS app, then my existing tags starting '/' will not be displayed at all on macOS - and then it will be too late to rename them, because they won't be displayed anywhere!

So I'm thinking, maybe I should rename them now as a defensive measure - just in case you make such a change.

Speaking of which... how could I actually rename, say, "/items/devices" to "!items/devices"? When I right click a tag and choose rename, it only lets me rename one of the words e.g. "items" or "devices". I cannot actually edit the slashes or make a tag "move up a level".

And please, please... don't tell me I need to edit EVERY occurrence of EVERY tag within the items themselves... I have 50+ nested tags on 700+ items :-o

Ben

At the moment the only resolution would be to edit each tag that starts with a / on each item to remove that. I am speaking with development to see if this is something we can do better on.

Ben

ag_kevin

Hi @semblance ,

I'm one of the developers for 1Password for Mac. I was discussing this with Ben to see what the best way to solve this for you. So, first, we will have a solution for you that does not require you to edit your 700+ items. Also, I tried it out myself and see that yes, there's that silly blank tag at the top level which is obtrusive and cumbersome to deal with. While we don't have a solution in the existing software, we will have one. We can't promise what the solution is just yet, as we're still evaluating. But we're leaning toward right clicking a tag and selecting a new command "Move Up a Level" that would get rid of the parent tag; in your case, the blank one.

Thanks for taking the time to bring this to our attention and I'm sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.

Cheers,
Kevin

ref: apple-3844

semblance

Thanks @ag_kevin,

there's that silly blank tag at the top level which is obtrusive and cumbersome to deal with

On macOS yes. On iOS it got worse, the tags starting '/' aren't displayed at all.

Have you considered the possibility of treating a leading slash differently so it's part of the top-level tag-name, rather than a level-separator?

That is, for a tag like "/items/devices", the top-level tag-name would be "/items", only the subsequent "/"s would function as level-separators, and in this case the second-level tag name would be "devices"?

This would look better, and allow the hierarchical tags to be alphabetically sorted before the non-hierarchical tags - and I would not need to do any tag renaming.

But I do understand you might not want to complicate the code with special cases.

Just a thought :-)

Ben

But I do understand you might not want to complicate the code with special cases.

It seems that's what we're up against. The idea Kevin mentioned would have broader utility than this one particular case, and as such is probably more likely the way we'll go. But we're still in the brainstorming phases here, that could change.

Ben

semblance

I wonder how much of a special case it really is - can a separator still be a separator if it's not separating anything?

Anyway, I'll leave you to brainstorm... thanks for the quick response.

Ben

I think it is more of a special case in that this is, as far as I'm aware, the only instance where someone has named a large number of tags prefixed with a /.

Ben

semblance

Hi, I just noticed 1Password for Mac 7.3.2 allows tag fragments (the characters between the /s) to be individually renamed.

There is even a 'rename' option on the "null" tag fragment I have at the top of my hierarchy, which is caused by my tags that have a leading /.

Using this, I was able to rename the top-level null tag fragment to -.

I expected this to update the tags on all the individual items so for example /items/devices would become -/items/devices. That would have been quite a good solution if it worked!

But they did not change at all.

Furthermore, my rename action was reverted when I restarted 1Password, so my top-level tag fragment is once again a null string. :|

Ben

@semblance

I spoke with one of our developers this morning about this. They're going to see about adding a catch for tags that begin with / to remove that automatically. Fingers crossed. 🤞🏻

Ben

semblance

hi @Ben, I just noticed that this since at least 3 August, this has already started happening. But it's only happened to items on which I've added/removed/edited tags since that date.

• For all items for which I've added/removed/edited tags since 3 August: any tags with a leading / belonging to that item have had the leading / removed, so for example /items/devices has become items/devices
• For all my other items: nothing has changed

So now I'm in a half-way house - some items are tagged /items/devices and some are tagged items/devices.

How will the change you mention work? Will it affect all my items, whether I edit them or not?

semblance

Why can't they just fix the bug which is preventing me from renaming my top-level tag fragment from null to -? Wouldn't that be simpler?

Ben

@semblance

The team has a lot on their hands trying to get the apps ready for the new Apple OS releases coming this fall. As such if we're going to get a fix for this out anytime in the near future we need to focus on whatever will take the least amount of time to develop and test. We don't want you to be left in a state where tags are hindering your use of the product indefinitely.

Ben

semblance

Thanks @Ben. There must be something wrong with the notification system because it seems completely random whether I get an email notifying me about replies.

Anyway, I am currently in limbo

• If I edit an item's tags, any leading slashes on all its other tags are silently removed
• As a result, most of my items still have leading slashes intact, while the ones I've edited do not
• Furthermore the tags with leading slashes are invisible on iOS, but not on macOS

It seems to me that since the ability to "rename" a tag fragment has already been implemented, it would be relatively easy to fix that feature so it works as expected against the "null" tag fragment displayed before my leading slash.

Your suggestion to add a catch for tags that begin with / to remove that automatically sounds more complex, because it sounds like developing a new feature, rather than fixing a bug in an existing feature. I'm trying to make this as simple as possible to resolve.

semblance

Just to be clear: I can select my null tag fragment. I can right click on it. I can select “rename”. I can rename it to -. After renaming it, the new tag name is displayed as expected, starting with -. This is what I want because my hierarchical tags are then sorted alphabetically before my other tags.

The only thing it doesn’t do is reflect that change in the items themselves that have that tag, and persist the new tag name after restarting the app.

If only it would complete that last step, and do the thing which the UI indicates has already been done, then it would be a good outcome from my point of view, and I would consider the issue resolved!

AGAlumB

@semblance: Regarding notifications, it depends on how you have your notification preferences setup:

https://discussions.agilebits.com/profile/preferences

You might not be receiving some when you are not @-mentioned, like here. But even if you have email notifications turned off or aren't receiving them due to a filtering issue in your account, you can always view forum notifications within the forum itself:

https://discussions.agilebits.com/profile/notifications

I've relied on those daily for years, and haven't had any problems with it. So that will work at least. :)

Regarding the issue you're having with your / tags, while I'm sorry that you're in this situation currently, as Ben mentioned earlier, we're looking at making it so tags that begin with / have that removed automatically. We need to be really careful when it comes to user data. Thanks for your patience. :)

semblance

Yes I have notifications enabled and I am talking about posts where I'm @-mentioned - usually no email arrives (and they're not in my spam folder either).

OK if you're sure that's the best way to resolve it, I will wait. Thanks.

AGAlumB

@semblance: Not long ago there was an issue where Hotmail users were not receiving emails from the forum. That seems to have been resolved, but definitely keep an eye out, and we will as well. I'm not sure what's best as far as the tags issue, but we do want to proceed cautiously since there may be others affected in different ways. Thanks for understanding. :)

Ben

@semblance

We've released 1Password 7.3.6 to the App Store which contains the following feature:

• You can now move nested tags up a level by swiping right on a tag in the tags list. {#3845}

This should allow you to eliminate the "parent" empty tag. Please let us know how it turns out.

Ben

semblance

Hi @Ben, I just became aware of this because Mac App Store said an update was available and I noticed this in the release notes:

You can now move nested tags up a level in the sidebar using the contextual menu on the nested tag. {#3844}

I did not get any notification as a result of being @-mentioned in this thread back in August, or as a result of my discussion getting replies - despite having the relevant right boxes ticked in my notification settings:

Anyway, I'm happy to report that the nested tag enhancement has allowed me to resolve this issue. I was able to eliminate my null tags, re-organize my tags in a way that I like, and the result is now visible in both macOS and iOS.

Many thanks for your help!

AGAlumB

@semblance: Indeed, there had been an issue with forum notifications in the past. You should receive one for this comment though. Thanks for letting us know you're enjoying the update! I'm glad it helped. :)

semblance

Hi @Brenty - yes got the notification this time.

ag_ana

That's great to hear, thank you for the update :+1: :)