Second vault when on the road?

jcwippler

Hello - my wife and I both use 1P, in her case on Mac & iOS via iCloud, in my case on Mac only. My vault has grown fairly large over the years, and I sometimes need access to it even when we're only traveling with my wife's iPad. I don't care too much about automatic syncing for my own data, it's more about having some important logins available.

My question is: how do I set things up so that my vault is available on the iPad for such incidental use? I can see some options for additional vaults on iOS, but that only seems to work with Dropbox, which we don't use (we use OwnCloud). I can get the vault on the iPad via OwnCloud, I assume. Can I then simply "open" that with 1P on iOS and get it installed as secondary vault? I don't want to lose my wife's primary vault with its current iCloud sync, nor merge them.

Would very much appreciate some tips on how to prepare this for an upcoming trip.

-jcw

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1Password Version: 5.3.2 / 6.0.1
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: 10.11 / 9.0.2
Sync Type: iCloud
Referrer: kb:1passwordanywhere, ug:mac/1passwordanywhere, kb-search:2nd 1password vault on ios

littlebobbytables

Hi @jcwippler,

At the moment we only support Dropbox and Wi-Fi Sync when it comes to secondary vaults. Now Wi-Fi Sync is a non-starter for you for a variety of reasons. It only allows you to synchronise a single Mac to multiple mobile devices and you have to sync the primary vault using Wi-Fi Sync. As you don't want to interfere with iCloud Sync I don't see Wi-Fi Sync being of any use to you at all.

That leaves Dropbox. We do see requests for other cloud services and I've already added your question as a vote to see support for OwnCloud. At the moment though it isn't supported.

The only possibility I can visualise right now is a convoluted one. Say you add your vault as a secondary vault to your wife's Mac. Then a backup from that Mac, which is compatible with 1Password for iOS, would contain a copy of both her vault and yours. If that backup was restored to the iPad she could reconnect her primary vault to iCloud and what you would have would be a copy of your vault but one that isn't synchronised. It's convoluted because you would have to go through the steps each time you wanted to update your vault and all of this is far more involved than syncing should be - it should be you set it up once and that's it. Unfortunately I can't think of another way to avoid using Dropbox I'm afraid. Let us know what you think and I certainly won't be hurt if you say this is impractical.

ref: OPM-1647

jcwippler

Aha! Convoluted perhaps, but it looks like your trick could indeed address my immediate need. I'll give it a try - using this procedure: https://support.1password.com/ios-itunes-backups/

Thanks!

• Jean-Claude

littlebobbytables

Hello @jcwippler,

That's the one. So for that to work it would mean your primary vault has to be a secondary vault on your wife's Mac but then a backup from that Mac would work.

So the trick is, you need to manually create a new folder titled Backups. In there you will place the backup from your wife's Mac and then iTunes copies the entire folder into 1Password for iOS's space. What won't work is if you try to just add the .1p4_zip file that is actually the backup.

I'm figuring you're comfortable with computers (you found the guide quickly and didn't seem put off by the workaround) but if you need any assistance with any of the steps please do let us know :smile:

jcwippler

Ok, trying it now (I'm a s/w dev, very familiar with Mac) - I'm on my wife's Mac, and have a backup of my own *.1p4_zip file there on the desktop (the backup is from my own Mac's primary vault). I can find and view the Data/Library/Backups folder) via prefs, but that's probably not the right one?

I backed up 1P on the iPad, and now I can see a Backups folder in iTunes => iPad => Apps. Do I place my *.1p4_zip file _next_ to it?

Update - I tried something else: saved Backups from iTunes to the desktop, added my own *.1p4_zip file into it (so now there are two files), deleted Backups from iTunes, and then added the modified Backups folder from the desktop back in. Finally, synced iTunes.

Hmm, not quite right - I can restore my wife's backup, but I can't seem to get my own vault backup in there as 2nd one.

Update #2 - ok, I can get my own vault as primary on the iPad too. The one remaining puzzle is: how do I get both of 'em in use by 1P on the iPad?

littlebobbytables

Hi @jcwippler,

Apologies for the delay.

So you're very close and you definitely have a hang of all the key parts to the steps. I believe once I've clarified one aspect of my original suggestion that you'll be good to go as they say :smile: As you've discovered, you can restore a single backup to the iPad but that won't let you add vaults from different locations. How do you feel about having your vault added to 1Password for Mac on your wife's machine though, probably using OwnCloud as that's your preferred option. Now we don't specifically state that we support OwnCloud meaning I can't comment on it directly but for Mac to Mac Folder Sync will use any location selected. I'm assuming OwnCloud works in a very similar way to Dropbox where stuff is stored locally in a folder and the OwnCloud service takes care of syncing.

By adding your vault as a secondary vault to your wife's copy of 1Password for Mac a new backup from that Mac will contain both her vault and your vault and they will both be present when you restore it to the iPad. If you want all of this could be done in a more temporary manner. You add your vault to 1Password on your wife's Mac, create the backup and then remove the vault.

Does that help?