Temporarily removing Desktop App Integration

rekoil

@calicyclist A memorable password most certainly does not need to be an insecure password, in fact it's pretty much the opposite, https://xkcd.com/936/. People are terrible at remembering convoluted passwords involving special characters and numbers, but 4 words. however unrelated they are, is pretty easy for a person to remember, and pretty much impossible for a computer to crack, both via brute force, and via dictionary attack, even if you assume only lowecase alphabetic characters and spaces are allowed.

@ag_yaron I stand by my statement above, but inevitably, such passwords take much longer to enter, and without the Touch ID or Apple Watch integration I feel encouraged to disable the locking mechanism in the browser extension, lowering my vault security substantially. I'm pretty good at locking my workstation when I leave it, but I'm only human...

This really was a terrible decision, I can't stress this enough, it will inevitably do one of two things:
1. sabotage your relationship with power users (at least in the short term, perhaps we'll forget eventually)
2. force a stressful schedule onto the development team responsible for re-engineering the DAI code to work cross-platform or whatever the reason was

Personally I would have probably just frozen the beta code until the new stable code was ready, unless a security issue crops up in the beta DAI code I guess, but you've not said anything to that effect so far.

I'm a software developer myself so I definitely understand the need to be able to ship new beta code, I just can't imagine it was worth it to remove such an extremely useful feature.

ag_yaron

Thanks for the feedback here, @rekoil .

This decision was not a spur of the moment thing, and we've taken into account all possible effects and dissatisfaction, but found that this would be the best way to rebuild things, even though we'll take some fire for it. We do hope that once we re-release the feature you'd all see why it was needed, but until then all we can ask is that you bear with us :)

There are no security issues with DAI and it had nothing to do with the decision, if you're looking for an answer on that topic.
Thank you again for voicing your concerns and opinion! It is truly amazing to see how such a beta feature affected so many users that they are passionately fighting to bring it back. It makes us even more excited about rebuilding it properly and releasing it for all users on all platforms!

sherds

I'm just a regular user, and for days haven't been able to figure out what went wrong with the software. Created a support ticket today and was referred to this forum/post. Really miss the integration. Adding my voice to the thread so you know how much customers miss this feature -- to me "it made the app" and without it I would have looked for another software alternative. Without customer feedback, you don't know how important it is. Go fast.

odysseus

And the desktop app integration has been working in beta for not for the past few months, but for years! And like others, I myself wondered why it hadn't made it into the release versions. This must have been a really tough problem to resolve!

ag_yaron

Thank you guys for chiming in!
It is great to hear how important this feature is to you.

Indeed, the desktop app integration feature was in beta for a year or so, and hasn't left the beta because it wasn't stable enough to release it as such, so building it from the ground up in a smarter manner is the way to go.

Thanks for the support and patience :glasses:

rekoil

I feel like I missed out because I only learned about the feature in the last month or so, but after setting it up there is no going back, hence my disappointment that it's temporarily gone.

rutson

Just a quick +1 for the frustration. Touch ID integration is a killer feature for me. I use Chrome with multiple profiles and having to unlock each, separately and regularly with the password is really grating when it has worked cleanly for the last several months. Please bring it back ASAP!

Ben

We'll be working hard to do just that. We understand how awesome Touch ID is. :) Many of us have been using Desktop App Integration as well, and so we feel the sting of the temporary removal alongside you.

Ben

swrobel

Here's a major wishlist feature that hopefully you can fix along with this: 1Password X seems to ignore "never suggest in browser"

mannym122

This is extremely disheartening, especially since it worked flawlessly for me for so long. It was almost unbelievable how this was still a BETA feature after what seemed like an eternity of "stableness" with TouchID + 1PasswordX. But in the end, I keep reminding myself that this was, indeed, a BETA feature that was in perpetual testing mode. That doesn't change how badly it stings though. I'm hoping you guys take care of this quickly since I know how impatient and raucous the internet crowd can be--especially ones that pay (repeatedly) for a product. Good luck!

ag_yaron

Thanks for the link @swrobel .
This is indeed one of the features we hope to support once the new integration is released. That and many others. Hopefully the new integration will allow us to do just that :)

We appreciate the feedback @mannym122 ! You are indeed lucky to have had such a stable experience with 1Password X. It would often require a restart to the browser/1Password app whenever there was an update for 1Password or the Browser, and some users had a really hard time getting desktop app integration set up in the first place, so it definitely required some work. Let's not forget that this was a Mac beta only, and other platforms did not have that feature at all (not even in beta), due to the technical difficulties we were having with it.

So all in all, the new DAI will hopefully resolve all of these issues. Stay tuned for new announcements as development progresses :)
Thank you for the support. :+1:

odysseus

@ag_yaron The sad thing is that you folks have been working on this desktop integration for years and you're changing methods NOW?

dteare

Thanks for your passion everyone. We all loved this feature as well. 🙏🏻

@odysseus: I'm having troubles finding the thread where I wrote about the previous rewrite of Desktop App Integration but suffice it to say this isn't the first time we've gone back to the drawing board on this feature. It's a challenging feature to implement in a secure manner across all platforms and we've had to iterate quite a few times now. The latest iteration is tied to our move to Rust and while that makes a lot of things easier it also introduces challenges as well. We're making good progress overall but indeed it's not as fast as we'd like. By removing the previous experimental implementation it gives us the breathing room we need to experiment with the new approach we have designed.

I look forward to being able to share when Desktop App Integration will be available for testing again. I miss it, too. ❤️

Tabaluga

@dteare Since you are reworking that unlock feature. PLEASE! Make the connection and unlocking of 1PX working with the desktop app for the case a local vault is present inside the desktop app. I do not ask to be able to access the data in that local vault from 1PX. Just the unlocking of 1PX together with the desktop. That would be super awesome! Thank you very much.

ag_yaron

Thanks for the suggestion @Tabaluga .

We'll keep that in mind and see if that's possible as development progresses!

Tabaluga

@ag_yaron Thanks for the response. Just as an info: Up to now (until unlocking was generally removed) it was like this: Unlocking via desktop app did work even when there was a local vault in the desktop app and you have been able to fill logins from 1PX by clicking in the login field and receiving the suggested logins. BUT the 1PX window was blocked with a “please turn of your local vault support in the desktop app” that was all. So functionality was there just the control window was blocked. And you have been able to temporarily disable the local vault, change settings in 1PX and turn the support back on.

ag_yaron

Thanks for the additional info @Tabaluga ,

This is intended behavior for now. Keep in mind that disabling local vaults will delete the local vaults and all their data, but yes, you can then turn it back on and create a new local vault.

Tabaluga

@ag_yaron Thanks for the heads up. Yes I know I always have a local backup copy of that vault. Actually I just wanted to point out that it is already working but just actively blocked with regards to the possibility of enabling that. 😆

ag_yaron

Hehe, yep.
Thanks for confirming :+1:

zavor

Registered a forum account just to add to the petition here. This was a selfish engineering decision. As an engineer myself, I'm usually apt to sympathize but I fail see the logic in removing beneficial features in a beta release. You may be a security-focused company, but you should not completely neglect paying customers in the process.

Ben

@zavor

I'm sorry we've made you feel that way. Desktop App Integration has always been a beta feature: it was never included in a stable release. Sometimes things we test don't work out, and that was the case here. The implementation we originally developed didn't provide the flexibility we need in order to support all of the various platforms we now want to support. We're not giving up, just taking a different approach.

Ben

carstenlange

I'll just check the forum again to see if there is progress or if you can provide an ETA. I think this is a very high priority due to the commitment to this topic.

Unfired

The worst mistake about this was not notifying users to optionaly disable extension updates before pushing this.
The 1PasswordX - Desktop integration was a gamechanger for me.

Ben

@Unfired

The worst mistake about this was not notifying users to optionaly disable extension updates before pushing this.

That isn't something that we'd recommend doing.

The 1PasswordX - Desktop integration was a gamechanger for me

I totally understand. It is for me as well. We hope to have it back in beta soon. :)

Ben

BryceMelvin

The removal of this feature was super disappointing. I used it constantly. I also spent time registering a forum account to express the extreme frustration with this decision!

Ben

Hey @BryceMelvin

I understand it is frustrating for the short term, but the usefulness of it is all the more reason to take the time to do it right. :) It'll be back better than ever. :+1: Thank you for taking the time to register and post your thoughts.

Ben

chrmcg

Switched back to the companion app extension for now, as the Touch ID authentication flow is too good to lose.

Is there a way I can sign up to receive an email when a 1Password X beta version that reinstates this feature has been released?

titanred

Rolling back to the previous Mac beta is super easy as we distribute those directly. It's just a hop skip and a jump to our app-updates server where you can grab any version you like.

The challenge is the extension itself. 1Password X is hosted on the Chrome Web Store and all updates are handled by Chrome. Unfortunately we have no ability to link to previous releases there.

++dave;

What about the Firefox extension which is not distributed through the Mozilla extension store, but rather directly from 1PW? Is there a way to roll back to an older version of the Firefox extension?

ag_yaron

Hey @chrmcg ,
You can sign up to our newsletter here: https://1password.com/newsletter/

@titanred ,
Rolling back to an older version is not something we recommend or can encourage users to do, as our apps are security-oriented, and staying up to date with the latest version is a basic security requirement.

onepwdusr

I agree with the others here that you should not have removed this feature while the improvement is being worked upon. 1PasswordX + Desktop app integration was an absolute killer feature and was awesome. I am eagerly awaiting this fix like everyone else. In the meantime, I will make do with the companion app. Like others have said, removal of this feature was highly disappointing ...