Do I really NEED to use / have 1Password Mini open? [You do not need to have the icon in menu bar]

robbski

The overwhelming majority of my 1Password 5 use takes place on my three Mac computers (27" iMac, 15" MacBook Pro Retina, and 11" MacBook Air). Safari is the ONLY browser that I use, and I have the 1Password extension for Safari enabled on all three machines. I don't think I've EVER clicked on the 1Password Mini in my menu bar at the top of my Macs. I was just wondering if I need to run this thing? I'm not sure if there are any benefits to having it turned off, or is it best to keep it turned on, despite the fact that I've never really used it. Just curious...

MikeT

Hi @robbski,

1Password mini is the central brain of 1Password, you cannot have 1Password without it. It handles your data for your browser extensions used for filling and also for auto-saving your data, it syncs your data, and many more.

You can choose to not have the icon in the menu bar, 1Password mini will continue to work without the icon. To turn it off, open the main 1Password app and go to the 1Password Menu > Preferences > General. Uncheck the option to have it show up in the menu bar:

elmimmo

For those of us that prefer to have the least possible number of running processes, be it to save resources or for peace of mind (and hiding the icon contributes to neither), I had rather the Safari extension simply needed, and therefore opened on demand, EITHER the full 1Password or 1Password mini. If "Always keep 1Password mini running" was unchecked, it would launch the full 1Password (preferably even with no window open) and leave it open, there obvious in the Dock, instead of then just launching 1Password mini too and closing the app as it does now. Quiting the 1Password app would therefore quit any running 1Password process too, and using the extension again would auto-launch it yet again, etc.

Besides, whatever your stance on this is, the wording of the legend under the checkbox is wrong, as it is not simply "recommended" to have 1Password mini if you use 1Password in a browser, but apparently, and according to your own reply too, required. It is somewhat irritating to manually uncheck the checkbox and then finding that it magically auto-checked itself back (it is not immediately apparent that it was using the extension that triggered the reversal of that setting). Changing the wording might at least make it more apparent of why it auto-checked itself back.

charlie999

I would suggest if you don't like it go somewhere else!!

I think it's a brilliant piece of software that makes things so much easier and secure. Having it running all the time I don't think is a problem. After all how can it possibly pop up and ask us if we need it to fill in a password or remember one we've just imputed for the first time if it's not running!!

littlebobbytables

@elmimmo‌ I'd say they used the word recommended as the browser extension isn't a required part of 1Password, merely a feature found very useful by many. When I was a 1Password 3 user and still a big fan of the Opera browser I was used to quickly alt tabbing between the two applications and cutting and pasting usernames and passwords as they didn't have an extension for the older, non-Chromium based Opera at the time. Now in under those circumstances 1Password Mini would have been quite redundant to me so I could have turned it off.

I'm not a developer so I'm not sure how easy your suggestion may be to implement. At the moment two separate processes communicate via a socket and the extension is, I believe, quite simple and intentionally so. By keeping the extension very simple it won't fall foul of any sandboxing restrictions which may or may not differ over various different browsers that they want to work with. I suspect extensions aren't allowed any local file access and so I don't think they could launch 1Password. Thus the need for a small helper process in the form of 1Password Mini. It runs in the background, mostly just sitting and listening for it's unique keyboard shortcut before doing its job.

As OSes become significantly more complex I think your hope of minimising running processes may end up as a uphill battle (if it isn't already). In fact certain OSes are all about large number of small processes rather than a monolithic one.

I agree that having an indicator of sorts if a preference is being changed for you might be nice.