1Password problems generating new passwords and updating websites

Nekoninda

When I want to change a password, 1Password gives me at least three ways of generating and entering a new password for a website. None of them work smoothly, and all of them sometimes cause losing my previous password for the website in 1Password, and not capturing the new password. I have set 1Password to Generate Memorable Passwords, and that usually doesn’t happen.

Here is an example. Using Safari, I attempt to change my password on the 1Password Support Community page, but similar problems happen on most sites. I enter my old password using 1Password to fill the Old Password field, and then I click in the New Password field. 1Password pops up a box proposing ‘Use Suggested Password’ and a button saying ’Save in 1Password’. The Suggested Password shown is a random string of symbols, not memorable words, even though I have chosen ‘memorable passwords’ in 1Password. While it looks like there is only one button in this popup, I have found that the 'Use Suggested Password' is a button, and it totally independent of the button 'Save in 1Password'. This is confusing.

Attempt Method 1:
If I click on ‘Use Suggested Password’, 1Password enters a bunch of dots into the New Password field, and does nothing else that I can see. If I check my clipboard, the new password isn’t there. If I check my 1Password login, the old password is there, not the new one. I cannot copy the new password from the New Password field on the webpage. So far as I can tell, a new password has been entered into the New Password and Confirm Password fields, but I don’t know what it is, and I can’t view it or add it to 1Password through editing my 1Password login for this webpage. The password entered in the New Password fields is NOT the one that was showing on the screen a moment ago. If I click the blue ’Change Password’ button on the 1Password Support Community webpage, my password is apparently changed, but OFTEN 1Password doesn’t prompt me to save this new and unknown to me password.

If I log out and try to log back in, I am told ’Sorry, the email/username and password combination were incorrect.’ If I had written down my old password somewhere else, entering that old password doesn’t work. So the password was really changed on the website, but not in 1Password. So far as I can tell, there is no way to recover, if 1Password doesn’t immediately prompt me to update the password for my old login, right after I click the Change Password button.

The only solution that I have found at this point is telling 1Password that I forgot my password, which generates an email message sending me a link to create a new password.

Attempt Method 2:
As before, when I Edit Profile and I get to the Change My Password page, I enter my Old Password. As before, I click in the New Password field. As before, 1Password proposes ‘Use Suggested Password’ and a button saying ’Save in 1Password’. This time, I click the ’Save in 1Password’ button, and it fills the new password fields, and saves the new password to the clipboard.

The password saved to the clipboard looks nothing like the suggested password shown right before I clicked the button. Once again, it is not a Memorable password, as I had specified. What happens next has a few variations. Sometimes I am prompted to save the new password in 1Password. If I choose to update the old login and agree, the password is changed, and things SOMETIMES work fine, both immediately and the next time I try to login to the webpage.

However, quite often, 1Password updates my login data to the new password, and then, a few seconds AFTER the 1Password login update, the webpage reports an error, saying that the old password wasn’t changed. Since I have just agreed to allow 1Password to replace my old password for this login in 1Password with the new one, I am screwed. I can’t enter my old password in the Change Password field, since it is no longer stored in 1Password. If I log out, I can’t log in again, because neither I nor 1Password remember my previous password for this webpage. Going through the webpage’s email resetting of my password for the webpage, as described above, seems like the only option.

Attempt Method 3:
Beginning as before, I go to the Change My Password page, and enter my old password (having reset it by email from the previous trial). I click in the New Password field, and again get a dropdown suggesting a new password, which again, IS NOT in the memorable password form that I have asked for. So I click on the icon for 1Password mini in my Safari browser menu bar, and click the button ‘+Generate Password’. This shows me a four-word memorable password option. A memorable password is what I desire.

Perhaps I like the first one presented. For example, I was just offered 'BAROQUE-armpit-grass-people’, which pleases me. If I don’t like the first choice, I hit the regenerate arrow a few times, until I see one that I like. Then I click the ’Save and Copy’ button. The password fields are filled, and a password is copied to my clipboard. However, almost every time, the password that was showing when I clicked the ’Save and Copy’ button is NOT the one that is copied to the clipboard. My desired random but memorable password, which 1Password had just offered to 'Save and Copy' for me, is gone forever, unless I wrote it down somewhere else, at the right moment.

Why does 1Password behave this way? It is frustrating when I am trying to choose a memorable password, and 1Password shows me one that I like, that it then replaces it with another, which is often less memorable, and may contain words that I don’t even know. It isn’t a good memorable password, if I have to look up one of its words in the dictionary each time I use it, to verify the spelling. For random but memorable to work, I need to be able to accept or reject an offering by 1Password, and then this must be the password that 1Password enters into the webpage and into my 1Password login for the site.

This whole procedure is quite frustrating, in that it often doesn’t work properly, and often causes a need to request an email password reset. The generation of memorable passwords often fails in a couple of ways, as described above. A minor annoyance is that when 1Password pops up the ‘Use Suggested Password’ field, that popup always blocks an important part of the screen.

After initially filling the Old Password field on the webpage, I suspect that 1Password sometimes enters additional information into the Old Password field, when it enters a new password into the New Password and Confirm Passwords field. I don’t know of any way to verify this, but it is very common for the Old Password to be declared invalid, even though I can log out and then log in using that old password, if I haven't finished the change password procedure.

What should be a simple process of updating a password is both slow and exasperating. My current procedure is to take notes outside of 1Password of every password offered, and then when/if the password update fails, make manual changes in the 1Password login for the webpage, to either restore the previous password when the update fails, or to insert the new password when that new password isn't properly updated within 1Password.

I could provide screen shots of these problems, if that would be of any help.

Is this password update system as unreliable for everyone else? Or are my problems weird? I’ve done a recent clean install of Big Sur, and it has all the updates. However, I have seen these problems for a long time. Can you suggest anything to make this procedure work better?

Thanks,
Derek

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1Password Version: 7.8.7
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: 11.6

ag_yaron

Hey Derek,
Thanks for taking the time to describe your issue in such a detailed manner.

The Safari extension works a bit differently than in other browsers, and we hope to indeed improve things in the next iteration of 1Password which is currently under development.

First, I'd like to point out that whenever you apply a new password on a website, whether by selecting the suggested password or by clicking on "Save & Copy" in the generator, the new password will automatically be saved in your 1Password 7 app under the "Passwords" category of your default vault for saving. So if you ever find yourself in a situation where the new password is lost:

1. Open your 1Password 7 desktop app.
2. Switch to your default vault (or switch to "All Vaults" if you're not sure which one is the default).
3. Click the "Passwords" category on the left sidebar and find the password there, stored as a "Password" item (an item with a grey key icon).

If you encounter a website where filling a new password into the "New Password" field and sending the form does not trigger the save/update prompt, you can trigger that prompt manually by clicking the 1Password extension icon in Safari's toolbar, then selecting the grey gear icon on the top right area of 1Password's window and choose "New Login". That will trigger the save/update prompt on the spot.

When you copy a password from 1Password, it will remain in your clipboard for a certain amount of time and then it will be wiped out from the clipboard, which is a security mechanism that you can adjust in the desktop app's preferences -> Security tab. Simply adjust the time in seconds to keep things in the clipboard before removing them, so that you may still paste the same password you have in the clipboard beyond the default 30-60 seconds.

If you'd like to try something new that might significantly improve your experience, I'd recommend you give 1Password 8 beta a try, alongside the new "1Password for Safari":

1. Install 1Password 8 beta: https://1password.community/discussion/122136
2. Go to the App Store and download "1Password for Safari".
3. Give your Mac a restart for good measures, then test and see how things work then.

With the new 1Password for Safari, when you select a new suggested password, it will immediately trigger the save/update prompt. Not only that, you can also set the default suggestions in the extension's generator and it will apply on the inline menu's suggestions when you visit websites.

I hope you'll find this helpful :)