Usability of Archive and duplicate items

andrewjcohen

I'm loving the usability of 1Password 8 on Mac (early access), and I am glad to see that both the "Archive" and "Recently Deleted have made their way into the desktop app. However, I remain confused by the user interface of the Archive.

The new indicator that shows an item's location is supremely useful. However, when viewing an archived item, there is no clear indication whether an item is in the archive or not. What's worse, if you move an item to another vault, I believe a copy is left behind in the original vault's archive. So, for me, I now have dozens of duplicate items in my archive. But the process of clearing out duplicates is harrowing, because it's not clear which items are duplicates of items that have been moved, and which items are ones I've consciously stashed away for safe keeping in the past.

Worse, I fear that other members of my family or team might retain access to sensitive archived items in shared vaults even after the original item has been moved to another vault. I'd argue that fixing this usability issue should be made a high priority since the confusing interface could lead to accidental item loss or inadvertent sharing of sensitive items.

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1Password Version: 8.5.0
Extension Version: 2.1.4
OS Version: 12.0.1

Ben

Hey @andrewjcohen

Thanks for the feedback on this! I understand your point about the item details not indicating the item displayed is archived. This tends to not trip me up, because I only access items in the archive by clicking on that section in the sidebar. Are you getting to these items a different way? I can see an argument for some sort of indicator in the item details showing the item is in the archived, but I'd like to better understand the workflow / use case. Thanks!

Ben

andrewjcohen

Hi @Ben Yes, I access the Archive in the sidebar, but it's not crystal clear to me when the items in the main area are duplicates of items that are not archived. The Archive's behavior leads to a lot of unnecessary duplicated items simply through the process of moving items from vault to vault. And clearing out duplicated out is a discomforting process because I feel unsure whether I might be deleting the original item inadvertently.

Ben

Gotcha, @andrewjcohen. I appreciate the perspective. I think there are (at least) two areas we could improve that would help with this:

1. Add a badge to the item details for items that are in the archive, indicating such ref: dev/core/core#11575
2. Stop retaining a copy of moved items in the origin vault in any form ref: dev/b5/b5#7412

I can't promise when or if we'll do those things, but I have documented them for consideration by our development team. Is there anything else you can think of that would help address your concern? Please let me know.

Ben

andrewjcohen

@Ben I think it would improve things substantially if the location bar of each item showed the "true" location of the item — that is, it's in the Archive. Currently, although "Archive" is highlighted on the left, the item's location bar at the top still says that it's located within a particular vault. It's also confusing to me that you can narrow the scope of the listed items by selecting a single vault from the "Vaults" list on the left. But the "Archive" item on the bottom doesn't work the same way in that if you select "Archive" it shows archived items across all Vaults, I believe.

Ben

Ah, yes, there is some abstraction going on there that is making things more confusing. Thanks for highlighting this, @andrewjcohen. I think there is room for improvement. Hopefully our product/development teams will agree. :)

Ben