Why does 1Password for Windows require administrative rights? (Why is it not portable ?)

N_Z_L
N_Z_L
Community Member

Hi, the question of having a portable version of 1Password on Windows have been asked many times. And everytime the only answer is "maybe, but not yet".

Could you please provide more information about why the app requires administrative rights by default? Does it need restricted Windows APIs? I need such information if I'm going to make the case to our security team that the tool should be installed with privilege escalation. If I'm not able to justify the privilege escalation, it disqualifies the tool.

And if there are features that make the tool require privilege escalation, as many have suggested before me I think it would be great if you made those features optional. In almost every circumstances one should install the app in a portable manner, for only one user, under its personal AppData directory.


1Password Version: 8.4.1.2
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Windows 10

Comments

  • Tertius3
    Tertius3
    Community Member

    I'm not sure what you do differently, but for me 1Password never requires administrative rights, not even for install. It actually installs itself into the user profile, not into any global program directory. The directory is C:\Users(userid)\AppData\Local\1Password\app\8\1Password.exe

  • Hi @N_Z_L,

    Thanks for writing in.

    1Password 7 or 8 doesn't require admin rights as Tertius3 mentioned.

    Are you downloading 1Password from our website?

  • N_Z_L
    N_Z_L
    Community Member

    Hi!

    My bad. I was misinterpreting the error.

    In fact what happens is the installation silently fails due to Internet Explorer being configured behind a company a proxy that uses TLS man-in-the-middle certificates for TLS content inspection. The 1password domain has been configured not to be inspected for confidentiality reasons. But I think your installer tries to contact another domain (or subdomain) in order to download and/or activate something.

    Running the installer on a default command line, nothing in the logs indicates it's a network issue. Same as double-clicking the file using the Windows GUI.

    Instead, running the same .exe installer within a command line where the proxy is disabled works fine, and the installation ends successfully.

    I'd suggest making the logs and dialog box a little bit more clear around networking issues.

  • Hey @N_Z_L:

    We've done some significant work on the TLS/SSL inspection issues you were running into, and the beta and nightly builds of 1Password 8 for Windows have vastly improved the state of play there. If you'd like, you can try out the beta now, or keep an eye out for this beta to be promoted to the stable release soon. Thanks!

    Jack

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