Feature Request: Easier way to open main 1Password app from 1Password Mini icon

PaulD

At the moment, I have to have 1Password taking up space in my Dock if I want to quickly open the main 1Password app using the pointer. This seems unnecessary, considering the 1Password Mini icon is always in my menu bar. Thus, it would be useful if there was a way of opening the main 1Password app from the 1Password Mini icon, both before and after I've authenticated. I realise that I can "Open 1Password" from the settings cog of 1Password Mini after I've authenticated, but this requires several pointer clicks, and so is not as convenient as it could be.

I think a two-finger click (and alt+click) on the unauthenticated menu icon that gives the option to open the main 1Password app would be a good solution, although you may be able to think of a more intuitive one.

Thanks in advance

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1Password Version: 6.3
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: 10.11.4
Sync Type: Not Provided

AGAlumB

@PaulD: I agree completely that opening 1Password with the mouse is a bit of a "drag" (har har). Using the keyboard shortcuts is much more fun and efficient:

⌘ \ Fill login for current page
⌘ ⌥ \ Open 1Password mini

And while there isn't a keyboard shortcut to open the main 1Password windows directly, Spotlight is great for this:

⌘ Space > 1p > Return.

Cheers! :)

PaulD

My use case was to get from 1Password Mini to 1Password, not the other way around. Hence, those shortcuts are not a solution.

Anyway, shortcuts are a less intuitive way, not more intuitive as I requested in my post.

You may think that keyboard shortcuts are fun and efficient, but what you are suggesting removes user choice. I like to use the pointer sometimes, when my fingers are already on the trackpad.

Lastly, if we can do everything using the spotlight shortcut, then what is the point of the dock? A single click on an app in the dock while I'm already using the trackpad is a lot more efficient than the 5 keyboard clicks you have suggested, and is much more user-friendly for new mac users - something that Apple itself and Mac software developers almost always disregard.

nmott

You may think that keyboard shortcuts are fun and efficient, but what you are suggesting removes user choice.

Not really. Having the option to open the app via clicking on it in the applications folder, dock, Launchpad, etc. or by hitting keyboard shortcuts by definition provides more user choice, it doesn't remove it.

Lastly, if we can do everything using the spotlight shortcut, then what is the point of the dock? A single click on an app in the dock while I'm already using the trackpad is a lot more efficient than the 5 keyboard clicks you have suggested, and is much more user-friendly for new mac users - something that Apple itself and Mac software developers almost always disregard.

That's true! Some people keep all or most of their apps in the Dock so they can have easy access to them. Other people, like yourself, don't want some apps taking up space in their Dock if they aren't open. Both options are fine and benefit users old and new alike. I myself don't keep anything in the dock that isn't running and use Alfred or Launchpad to open apps. That's more convenient for me; clicking on something is more convenient for you. It's a good thing that OS X has been set up to allow both of us to live the easy life :)

All that being said, we do appreciate your feedback. It's always good to know what people want to see from 1Password.

PaulD

Not really. Having the option to open the app via clicking on it in the applications folder, dock, Launchpad, etc. or by hitting keyboard shortcuts by definition provides more user choice, it doesn't remove it.

I was already aware of the shortcuts. My point was, suggesting to use shortcuts is not a solution to my post, and does not negate the need for a better way to access the main app via the GUI alone.

Other people, like yourself, don't want some apps taking up space in their Dock if they aren't open.

I DO use the dock, which is the whole point of my post, but it's impossible to have every single app in the dock. This is why I don't like unnecessary duplication between the dock and the menu bar.

nmott

I fear that we're missing the forest for the trees.

I was already aware of the shortcuts. My point was, suggesting to use shortcuts is not a solution to my post, and does not negate the need for a better way to access the main app via the GUI alone.

Fair enough!

I DO use the dock, which is the whole point of my post, but it's impossible to have every single app in the dock. This is why I don't like unnecessary duplication between the dock and the menu bar.

I know. I didn't say that you don't use the Dock, I said that you don't want 1Password in your dock, which I assumed was the case from...

At the moment, I have to have 1Password taking up space in my Dock if I want to quickly open the main 1Password app using the pointer. This seems unnecessary, considering the 1Password Mini icon is always in my menu bar.

But, regardless: Thanks for the feedback. :)

PaulD

You're welcome. Thanks for listening.

nmott

:+1: :)

AGAlumB

@PaulD: Thanks for clarifying! I agree that keyboard shortcuts are less discoverable, even if they're more efficient. That's why I shared them, after all, because not everyone knows of their existence, and they can be incredibly useful to folks in the community, even if it's not what you prefer.

Also, part of what makes Macs great is that everything can be done with the mouse if you want. But while we can consider adding things like two finger clicks, those are also "hidden" tricks like key combinations. We'll see if we can come up with better ways to open 1Password, but it's also important to not make things overly complicated. Food for thought! :chuffed:

PaulD

.

PaulD

With every 1Password update with new features, this is the one that I've been hoping for. Has there been any progress made on it?

AGAlumB

@PaulD: Thanks for checking in! I'm not sure what you mean by "progress" though since we haven't announced that this is something we're working on. If we make changes like this it's more likely to be part of a larger redesign, rather than changing the way 1Password/mini behaves in the middle of a development cycle. It's certainly something we'll keep in mind though as we develop future versions. Cheers! :)

PaulD

Fantastic! The useless icon remains in my dock, taking up unnecessary space then. :/

AGAlumB

Well, if you prefer, you can easily remove it from the Dock. But if that's the most convenient way for you to access 1Password, in spite of the many alternatives, then I'd hardly call it "unnecessary space". And of course at least screen "real estate" doesn't incur property taxes. ;)

PaulD

As I've explained already, at the moment it's unavoidable to have the app in the dock, if we want easy access to the main app in a way that follows convention and is intuitive for everyone. The IPassword Mini does not provide easy access. There would be no need for this duplication, if Agile provided an Alt context menu for 1Password Mini, so it works like most other menu bar icons.

What's most frustrating is that this is a minor change.

Seriously, I wish your team would concentrate on the fundamentals that all customers could benefit from, rather than attempting to headline-grab, by working on complex (and, no doubt, time-consuming) features for the small minority of customers (ie new macbookpro owners). While you are all slapping yourselves on the back, your announcements just seem self-indulgent to the customers who don't benefit.

AGAlumB

I get where you're coming from. After all, I don't have a new MacBook Pro either! But regardless, even I get excited about Touch ID support on macOS (finally!) Apple's given us the tools to implement it, and given our experience with this on iOS, it isn't as much work as you might think. And if and when I do get a new Mac, that's at least an option for me.

But you're right that, in comparison, another mouse option for 1Password is probably a minor change. But at the same time, you are, as far as I can tell, the only one to request this. So whatever small percentage of new MacBook Pro buyers there are out there, Touch ID support benefits all of them. Obviously this isn't the perspective you're coming from, but that's decidedly less "self-indulgent" than you make it out to be. And honestly I suspect that more than one of us will be using this ourselves in the near future.

Touch ID is also a feature that adds both security and convenience to 1Password. Given that these are both core to our philosophy, that's absolutely more exciting for us to work on. I think we do our best work when we're inspired, and a lot of people benefit from that. I'm sorry that it isn't you in this particular case, but hopefully there area lot of features and improvements that you have benefited from over the years, and will continue to do so.

For my part, I'm going to spend the rest of the week (and, ideally, my life, but let's be realistic) being thankful for what I do have. If I dwell on it, there are a lot of things I myself wish to see in 1Password still, but I purchased it because of what it can do, not what I wish it could someday. And I feel like I've gotten my money's worth.

PaulD

You've decided to roll out TouchID support now. How many of your customers have a new macbook now, and how many don't? A decision to invest resources into a feature should take into account how many people are actually able to make use of it.

I'd certainly love a new macbook (well, not the crippled current model, but one of the next ones), but unfortunately it's not going to happen any time soon. Don't turn your back on your loyal customers, just because they can't afford the latest and greatest!

Small features like the one I've suggested are easy to implement and provide "low-hanging fruit". It makes sense to mix them in with the big headline-grabbing features, that take a lot of resources, because they make the core product more powerful.

Btw, in case you haven't considered it, a context menu for 1Password Mini could provide shortcuts to other functionality too, not just opening the main app.

AGKyle

Hi @PaulD

I'm one of the senior members of our support team and also a member of our development team. I just wanted to chime in here as a fairly neutral third party :) This conversation has gotten a little hot and I think all around it could've been done differently. I'm sorry if you've gotten frustrated by this thread.

No one here wants to argue with you. In fact, we all want a bunch of features to make it into 1Password. I have my own pet features I would love to see, my colleagues no doubt have their own as well. It's part of caring about the app, you want to see it become a better thing. Reality tends to run counter to this sometimes though.

For instance, we are a business, so we have to do certain things that make financial sense. For instance, you bring up why we support Touch ID now. Well, we've had thousands of requests ever since the iPhone supported Touch ID to have a way to unlock the Mac with it. In this case we were able to just implement Touch ID directly. Combined with the Touch Bar this got us featured on the App Store which I assume gains us a lot of additional eye balls there, but also in the media where apps are discussed that support these features

While there may not be a lot of Macs out there that support Touch ID yet, it's important to be on top of these features because it really helps visibility and since we don't pay for advertising all that much it really helps when we can be featured on blogs or various stores for implementing features and having them available the day devices hit the users hands. These users also love these features as well. And one day when you have a device that supports them I can only hope that you'll appreciate them as well. I'm saving my pennies for a new MacBook Pro, my 2012 model is starting to show signs of age :)

We get a ton of support requests for features and bug fixes and improvements we can make. It's very hard for us to say yes to all of them. In fact, it's impossible for us to say yes to all of them. This doesn't mean we don't appreciate someone's feedback, we most certainly do. We fully realize that we are here because users like yourself have purchased 1Password and because enough of you have done that we are able to do what we love to do.

As you can imagine though, it's really hard to tell someone no. So, our stance is to try to make sure ideas are seen and heard by people making decisions so that we can consider them at some point in the future. Not all requests will make it in, I'd say a vast majority do not. We're a small team and we have to pick our battles between fixing bugs and adding features. It's not easy.

Our support team tries to provide alternatives or other solutions that might help address requests. This isn't to insult or say anything otherwise, it's simply meant to try to provide you with an option now rather than later. It's not a solution necessarily, it's an option though. We want to help you today, not a week or months or years down the road.

I can say for your particular request that it's not something we have planned at the moment. This doesn't mean it won't happen, it just means it's not something we have planned at any particular point in the immediate future. I say this so that we aren't leaving you waiting for each release to see if it arrives, I think you deserve at least that much for providing your feedback.

I am sorry if this disappoints you though. It sounds like you feel very strongly about this feature and it is never fun to tell someone no. But I hope that we can all agree that in the end we want to make 1Password better, and sometimes the way to make it better doesn't always make everyone happy. We do hope that some of the new things we have planned in the future will make you happy though, maybe one of them will be this request eventually.

Also, thank you for providing your feedback. It really means a lot that you enjoy using 1Password enough to provide feedback. This isn't something you had to do, it's something you decided to do and took energy and effort to do. That energy and effort is greatly appreciated. At least from this guy who has been at AgileBits for 5 years. This app means a lot to me, and it's humbling and amazing to see that other people care about it enough to write in and let us know their thoughts.

PaulD

Kyle, you've diplomatically and comprehensively covered all the issues here, and I appreciate the effort involved in doing so.

It would be nice if you'd put all the features that people have suggested on a recognised/official public list, so we can all put our own ones into perspective. Maybe we could even vote for our favourite ones.

AGKyle

@PaulD It's my pleasure. Really.

The only way we could do that is if it were automated someway, or built into our existing bug tracker. We don't really want to have two places to look for bug reports and feature requests if we can avoid it. And we definitely need an internal tracker that is only visible to us for internal discussions of issues. I'll keep my eyes peeled for options though. I know we haven't been totally happy with our current bug tracker but I'm not sure we're looking to switch products either. Tricky issue all around on that one. Sometimes I envy those open source projects that can just use Github issues, it must really simplify things for them :)

PaulD

There's Atlassian JIRA. If you encourage customers to use the "watch" feature (which sends them an email when a ticket is updated, much like github's "subscribe"), to watch individual tickets, it gives an idea of which feature requests and bugs are most important to them. You can then generate reports (or even just searches) that are sorted in this order.

AGKyle

Hi @PaulD

We actually use them now. But the problem is we simply can't make our bug tracker open to the public. It's just not a feasible option for security reasons amongst others.

Right now most of our tracking comes by creating an issue, then commenting on each with each customer that writes in with a similar request along with some quotes if necessary. It works but it's not super efficient. I kind of wish they had some way of better handling this without making it public, but I haven't yet seen a way to do it.

It would be nice if we could do something like that, as it would make our lives a bit easier in some ways but given we're a security company and we have to be mindful that bug reports probably need to be private first and then public after the fact so as to not accidentally leak information. Plus, we have a lot of design discussions and internal information that just doesn't need to be seen publicly.

It's a complicated problem for us. Like I said though, I'll keep my eyes peeled for other options and maybe we can find a better way to handle this. It would be great if we had a way that we could link discussions in our forum here to actual issues in the tracker. It would make it easier to follow up with customers when issues were resolved and we could use that data to track interest.

I'm sure we'll find something eventually but we haven't yet found that sweet spot.