Secure input & Textexpander?

suigeneris

Fishing around for reasons why my Textexpander use fails so often for "secure input prevents expansion".

Could this be down to 1Password? The only way to fix it seems to be rebooting my Mac which is a huge time hog.

Why am I asking here? because it happened after using 1P today and I wonder if they are linked? (the problem is probably elsewhere but I thought I'd ask)

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1Password Version: 6.3.5
Extension Version: 4.6.1
OS Version: 10.12.1
Sync Type: Not Provided
Referrer: kb:undefined, kb-search:textexpander

Pilar

Hi @suigeneris

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble that you're having with 1Password and Textexpander cohabitating in your computer. 1Password can indeed interfere with TE, but it's often very clear scenarios where this happen. For example when you start editing something in 1Password, then do not leave the edit mode in 1Password but change windows to keep on working. You only need to exit the edit mode to solve this. You can read some more details about TE, Secure Input and the interaction with 1Password here: https://smilesoftware.com/textexpander/secureinput

If you could try paying attention to what behavior of 1Password causes Secure Input to be activated it would help us diagnose whether there's a bigger problem. Also, if you want to, try quitting 1Password next time you bump into this. This should be either be able to solve it without restarting the computer or give us some clues on where things might be failing :chuffed:

Please let us know what you find out with all this :chuffed:

suigeneris

Hi Pilar, thanks for the reply. I almost always access 1P from the safari extension, occasionally from the top menu bar. I've been having these problems for over a year but hadn't connected the two before.

With regard to quitting 1P does that also hold for the safari extension or should I remove it?

Drew_AG

Hi @suigeneris,

No, you don't need to remove the 1Password browser extension - it's just a way to connect to 1Password from the browser and shouldn't be causing this problem.

Are you using 1Password at the same time TextExpander becomes disabled? 1Password uses secure input for the master password field of its lock screen, and also when you edit items. But as soon as you unlock 1Password or save/cancel changes, it stops using secure input and TextExpander should start working again.

Does TextExpander show a message saying 1Password enabled secure input? When TextExpander becomes disabled, it should let you know which app is using secure text input. When it happens on my own Mac, I see a notification from TextExpander in the corner of my screen that tells me which app. If you don't see notifications like that, you should be able to click on the TextExpander icon in the menubar to see a message about why it is disabled. Please let us know, thanks! :)

suigeneris

The difficulty in answering is I never notice the problem until it fails to expand. I hide the Dock and menubar so only look there when the problem occurs - at the moment there is greyed out text as in the attached pic which leads to the TE explanation in the second pic (though these are out of order in the post preview).

"Learn More" just leads to a list that includes 1P, Safari and Chrome (as the ones I commonly use).

.

Drew_AG

Hi @suigeneris,

Thank you for the screenshots! In both of them, there is a message from TextExpander that says Secure Input was enabled by "loginwindow". That is a process of the operating system and isn't part of 1Password (if 1Password had enabled secure input, TextExpander would specifically mention 1Password in that message).

The "loginwindow" process is used for signing into your user account on your Mac, but aside from that, I don't know specifically why it seems to be constantly enabling secure input for you. If you haven't already done so, you might want to contact Smile (the developers of TextExpander) to see if they can help, or check their support site here: https://textexpander.com/support/

I'm sorry we aren't able to do more to help with that! But hopefully this at least helps narrow down the cause of the problem. I hope Smile/TextExpander support is able to help get things working correctly again! :)

suigeneris

Well at least we eliminated one cause! Think I might switch to Keyboard Maestro for the functionality and end the problem. Thanks for your help.

Drew_AG

You're very welcome! If you need more help or have any questions about 1Password, be sure to let us know. Have a great weekend! :)