1Pass 5, Auto-fill, and extensions. Oh my!

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dzm
dzm
Community Member
in Mac

First some background -

I've been using 1Password since late in the 1Password 3 cycle. Because of this I've accumulated some drive cruft. Over the weekend I decided to clean up some of this cruft. This was a mistake since it ended up exposing several broken (or poorly documented) aspects of 1Password 5.

In my zeal to reclaim some HD space I removed the 1Password 4 application using the AppZapp application (this utility removes the app plus any plists, caches, etc associated with it). This exposed the first problem:

Auto-fill stopped working. Upon trying to auto-fill a form I was presented with the "auto-fill isn't working; view the troubleshooting guide" error. This is the behavior that was introduced in 1Password4 when AgileBits introduced the requirement that browsers be signed OR that the user explicitly disable code signing. In checking the Advanced settings of 1Password5 I found that the checking was still disabled (I use SRWare Iron, a Chromium derivative, and therefore need to have this setting disabled). The feature error continued to be reported.

Install of Browser Extension fails. On the presumption that I may have a mismatch between my browser extension version and the 1Password application I decided to reinstall the extension.I don't know if this is a flaw in your installer page or due to some restriction on my end, but going to your Extension page ( https://agilebits.com/onepassword/extensions ) and clicking the big green INSTALL NOW button immediately unveils a red "Something went wrong" error. Only by watching the Javascript console could I find that the page was attempting to refer me to the Google Play page for the extension ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/1password-password-manage/aomjjhallfgjeglblehebfpbcfeobpgk ). On reinstalling the extension (to reiterate, I installed it directly from the Google Play page since your own extension page immediately throws error) I saw, buried in the extension description, that "1Password 4" is required.

It is very, very hard to find 1Password 4.x. On the off-chance that there really was a requirement for 1Password 4 despite 1Password 5 already being installed and running I decided to reinstall 1Password 4. After much exploring I found a link at the bottom of this web page ( https://agilebits.com/downloads ). Note that at the TOP of that page is "1Password for Mac" and a single download link pointing at 1Password 5.0.2. Only scrolling to the bottom of the page does one find a "Legacy" download misleadingly labeled for "OS X 10.9 Mavericks." This download points to the iPassword 4.3.3 install.

Upon downloading 4.3.3, installing it, launching it, and unsetting the "Advanced" code checking option did auto-fill of forms begin working again. After this I have now deleted 1Password 4. Auto-fill forms is still working.

I THINK this shows that 1Password 4 properly sets a preference bit that 1 Password 5 does not know how to set, but that it understands if a legacy version of 1Password sets it. I've verified this by going to 1Password 5's "Advanced" setting and toggling "Verification" to On. Auto-fill continues to work despite having been toggled to the value that SHOULD trigger the alert. That basic bug in 1 Password 5 triggered this long journey of problems described above.

I suspect that AgileBit's QA process unfortunately hasn't started from a vanilla configuration with unsigned browsers. Despite their unsupported status, I would encourage AgileBits to include at least one Chromium derived browser in their QA regime.

Thanks!

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  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni
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    Hi @dzm,

    Thanks so much for providing such detailed feedback here! I think I can see where things got tangled up:

    In my zeal to reclaim some HD space I removed the 1Password 4 application using the AppZapp application (this utility removes the app plus any plists, caches, etc associated with it).

    We don't recommend using any app cleaners to remove 1Password, especially in the case where you are merely changing from one version to another. Because 1Password 5 is an update to 1Password 4 and not an entirely new app, they make use of some of the same folders, so removing the last traces of 1Password 4 could actually be removing some of the files that you need in order for 1Password 5 to function properly.

    The other reason we discourage app cleaners is that, included in those files and folders is a great collection of backups. If something were to happen with your database in 1Password 5, it could be a great relief to know that those backups from version 4 are still available on your system. Of course, we hope that this is nothing that you ever need to make use of, but when dealing with something as important as your password data, we like to err on the side of caution.

    I'm glad to hear you were able to get things working again, although I do apologize that it was a bit of a process. I think that a fresh install of 1Password 5 would have also worked in this case, since it sounds like we simply needed to replace a few files that your app cleaner 'cleaned up'.

    I hope that 1Password works smoothly for you from now, but if you have any further questions or concerns, we're here to help!

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