Notes fields are not rendered with markdown — only Secure Notes are

verdi1987

I found this thread after discovering that markdown formatting had disappeared from my notes. :'(

Ben

Sorry about that @verdi1987

Ben

creekfire

Please enable this in notes on logins, etc., as soon as possible! I was happily using that feature and was thrilled when you added it (even if unintentionally). It made me very sad to see it go away again and break the formatting I had applied to various notes.

Ben

Thanks for the feedback, @creekfire.

Ben

doof

Here is an example of the markdown in notes use case for me which has forced me to revert to 7.0.5: (note that the screenshot was from a beta, the clipped text was fixed in the release)

https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/comment/421717/#Comment_421717

Ben

Thanks for sharing @doof.

Ben

brettwilcox

Just thought I would weigh in as well. I too was using markdown in my notes, but 7.0.6 or .7 broke the functionality (or fixed it). I had all of my 2FA codes formatted to look like they belong plus about 50+ notes on accounts. But they are now a mess and will make copying+pasting harder unless I go back and undo all of my formatting which will take time.

This was definitely billed as a feature from the 7 release informaiton. I would put this at the top as far as "fixes" go since you removed functionality without letting the community know.

Thanks for all the hard work on such an awesome app! :+1:

a.jaffe

Heh, thanks, @brettwilcox, for pointing to @dteare’s original 1P7 blog post, which (in case not everyone clicks over) actually shows a screenshot of a markdown-formatted “notes” field!

I am therefore puzzled by the repeated comments from @brenty and @ben that this was never really intended as a feature, and was really kind of an accident, or even a bug.

MrC

@a.jaffe ,

The notes data is located in the same internal field name regardless of the actual 1Password category. If Agilebits did not specifically exclude all but the Secure Notes category from using the markdown engine, all note content would be rendered as markdown. This is just one possibility, and may be what they were trying to say (without being too technical).

AGAlumB

@MrC: Thanks for putting it much more eloquently than I could. :) Indeed, it's a bit of a challenge due to both the way we've setup notes fields from the outset, and, perhaps more significantly, because some people want Markdown in notes, some don't, and others want it in some but not others. It's definitely something we're looking at finding a good solution for though.

AGAlumB

@a.jaffe: Indeed, that's how it worked initially, and while having it present in all notes fields was unintentional, Markdown sure does look good in screenshots. :) Unfortunately in day to day usage this also caused problems for people. One specific reason that notes fields don't use Markdown rendering today is because this broke Software Licenses for a lot of people (among others). That is not what we indented at all. And since not everyone wants Markdown enabled everywhere in general, we're looking at ways to better accommodate both the folks in this discussion who want one thing and everyone else who wants another. Thanks for your feedback on this!

AGAlumB

@brettwilcox: You're totally right: notes are problematic for copying and pasting in a number of ways right now, and I'm sorry for the trouble that's caused you and others. The Markdown debate is just one aspect of this, so we're going to be careful about how we proceed. Regular notes fields supporting Markdown was not intended, but the unintended behaviour was there and appreciated by some, and as a result some folks are missing it now that it's been removed. So we're looking at a number of changes to make notes more usable for the widest range of 1Password users. Thanks for your feedback and encouragement on this, and for bearing with us while we determine the best way forward.

jwhitley

I'll chime in as another person who was delighted by the "bug" in early 1P7 releases. And another use case for notes field markdown support: for sane presentation of randomart images from ssh-keygen, stored along with the key's passphrase in 1Password.

rlh

I think I'll use Markdown on occasion but, for me, my notes are simple enough that just clean text is fine.

The problem that this new feature creates for me, and by extension for folks that don't even know Markdown, is that the current "always on" implementation requires me to actively avoid Markdown. So something as simple as a one line of text followed with 2 lines of text indented by 8 spaces (from hitting tab) that used to look like this:

Things to do before bed
        Brush teeth
        Floss

Now looks like this:

Things to do before bed

    Brush teeth
    Floss

And other whitespace is destroyed by the Markdown formatting (which I can't avoid!).

I agree with @jwhitley that Markdown being available in any note field everywhere will be a good thing as long as (repeating my position from other posts) enabling Markdown can be done on an item-by-item basis.

AGAlumB

@jwhitley: Thanks for letting us know. That may be something we can better accommodate in the future. :)

AGAlumB

@rlh: That's a great example. We'll see what we can do to take that into account as we continue developing this feature as well. :)

ref: apple-1771

Chad_NE

When I chose 1Password, the competitive advantage I valued most was the "Notes" field for logins. The markdown support was just fantastic for organizing text into clear sections. This thread clearly explains why the feature may create problems, and that you are seeking a solution to accommodate both sides of the issue.

My recommendation would be for markdown to be disabled by default in each login. 1Password already supports dropdown menus for some fields. Perhaps you could add one (like that shown below) which appears in edit mode:

If the user chooses "Formatted text", then a formatting bar would appear above notes whenever in edit mode. The formatting bar is a bit more approachable than markdown, and will expand the audience which would benefit from text formatting. Below, I've simply copied the text formatting bar used in this discussion forum:

If a formatting bar is not possible, then a hovering text-formatting pop-up can work. This is familiar to users of Microsoft Word (Windows editions only).

I hope one of these ideas might inspire a solution. I am sad whenever I look at the unformatted markdown in my login notes fields : ( Thanks for working to make all parties happy!

Lars

Welcome to the forum, @Chad_NE! Thanks for taking the time to share both your experience and your ideas with us. We're currently looking into ways we can refine and iterate on the user experience of Markdown in upcoming releases. I'm not certain what direction we're likely to go in at this point, but you're certainly not alone in wanting a selectable Markdown experience. For anyone else reading this, to be clear, the above screenshot is something @Chad_NE mocked up, it is NOT a feature currently available in 1Password for Mac -- just putting that out there so other users aren't confused they can't find what they see in your screen-shot. Thanks again! :)

rlh

Great suggestions @Chad_NE! The formatting bar is a winner IMO.

@brenty and @Lars please add my "vote" to this idea. (And extend my apologies to the developers for the potential increased workload. :) )

AGAlumB

@rlh: Sure thing! Thanks for the feedback. I like it too. I'm not sure how feasible that is with the way notes fields work currently, but it's certainly something we can consider doing in the future. I don't think the development team minds extra work so much as it can just be tough to balance everything. It's good to be busy though, and to have people so passionate about our software. :chuffed:

nowaddflour

In light of all this I wonder if it might be a good idea to go back and update your post at https://blog.agilebits.com/2018/05/22/1password-7-for-mac-the-best-ever/ ?

In the "Detailing your items" section there is a screenshot of a gmail login with markdown notes underneath it and the explanation

If you caught yourself yelling What Are Those?! when looking at the formatted notes field, you’re not alone. You can now give your notes richly formatted text using Markdown!

When I google "1password 7" this is the first link in search results - I just upgraded thinking that I was getting this.

7 is still a good upgrade, but I feel like I am not getting what was advertised so it's disappointing.

AGAlumB

@nowaddflour: I'm sorry to hear that. As mentioned previously, while this feature was intended for the only item type fully dedicated to notes — Secure Notes — we realize that some folks also want to be able to use Markdown in other items as well, so we're looking at ways to make that possible without negatively impacting others. Thanks for your feedback.

kpitt

I realize I'm late to the party on this thread, but I just went in to some of my Login items to update the lists of 2FA backup codes that I had converted to Markdown-formatted notes after 1P7 was released. When I couldn't get them to show as anything other than plain text anymore, I went looking for answers and found this thread.

I've read the whole discussion and I could understand the points made by the team IF I felt like it was true that this was never intended to apply anywhere except full-fledged Secure Notes. However, I think the point made by @nowaddflour above is very important for you guys to understand. When you made the v7 announcement on your blog, you showed us the feature for formatting the Notes field of a Login item before you even mentioned that it was also supported for Secure Notes. The image at https://bucket.agilebits.com/dave/1Password7-items-details2.jpeg clearly shows the Markdown formatting in the Login item, and it clearly wasn't an accident because it is specifically addressed in the text.

While I still believe that 1Password is the best password manager out there, with or without this feature, it would be greatly appreciated in the future if you guys could refrain from selling us on cool new features and then pulling them out from under us without a word of explanation. Even if you never add this feature back, I would be happy just to see you guys own up to your mistake and give us a transparent and truthful explanation of why the feature was pulled.

Ben

While markdown was originally only intended for Secure Notes we were generally pretty happy to release it with v7 for all notes fields when it so happened that the change applied to them as well without any additional effort. Because it wasn’t really intended the fact that it worked wasn’t mentioned in documentation or release notes, but it was picked up when writing the blog post. Unfortunately there were some technical difficulties discovered after the 7.0 release (long after that blog post was written) that made it unacceptable to leave that implementation in place. We had to pull it until we could get the issues sorted. My understanding is that the code has been written to address the issues here and if testing goes well it’ll be included in a future update. I am sorry we let you down here. All I can say is we’re working to do better.

Ben

AGAlumB

I would be happy just to see you guys own up to your mistake and give us a transparent and truthful explanation of why the feature was pulled.

@kpitt: We did. Please read my comments and Ben's above. It was not intended, and caused some buggy behaviour. I think "mistake" is implicit in that, but I'll just say it: we made mistakes with the original (7.0) implementation of Markdown and have been addressing this with updates.

I agree that it would have been clearer if I'd reiterated that this was a bug that caused issues in some cases though, but at the time "not intended" seemed to me to reflect that. I apologize for any confusion I caused. And as Ben mentioned in his most recent post, we're testing some changes in this area in the beta currently. If all goes well, I suspect you'll be happy with the next update. :)

StarPine

Hi all,

Any updates for 1password do not seem to address the markup issues. I still see formatted text I don't want to see like markup.
A little disable button for secure notes for markup would be very welcome.
As @rlh mentioned a simple text with some tabs makes plain text unreadable.
This feature is still active from the beginning of 1password and you know what, 1password works fine, but oh man those wrong formatted texts and having to switch between Edit mode and back to get a normal view should be your number two priority next to security.
The default scrolling back to the top when I am done editing and saving my secure note needs to be addressed as well.
@brenty @Ben @Lars it has been quiet in this thread for over a month, no updates? no progress? no release schedule for an option to turn this feature off or on. That's really all I need, I want to disable this markup view which makes reading secure notes more difficult.
Please focus on use not on features, like dark mode.

AGAlumB

@StarPine: As mentioned above,

Any updates for 1password do not seem to address the markup issues. I still see formatted text I don't want to see like markup.

Markdown formatting is not optional.

A little disable button for secure notes for markup would be very welcome.

It's something we're considering for a future version.

As @rlh mentioned a simple text with some tabs makes plain text unreadable.

You can use ``` at the beginning and end to activate preformatted text.

This feature is still active from the beginning of 1password and you know what, 1password works fine, but oh man those wrong formatted texts and having to switch between Edit mode and back to get a normal view should be your number two priority next to security.

I think stability should be prioritized with security about text formatting.

The default scrolling back to the top when I am done editing and saving my secure note needs to be addressed as well.

Thanks for the feedback.

@brenty @Ben @Lars it has been quiet in this thread for over a month, no updates? no progress? no release schedule for an option to turn this feature off or on. That's really all I need, I want to disable this markup view which makes reading secure notes more difficult.

We don't discuss unreleased stuff, or timelines for it. We also don't just talk to hear ourselves. If and when there's a change, it will be in the release notes — and of course 1Password can speak for itself too: if and when we make changes i n the area, you'll probably notice just by using it. ;)

Please focus on use not on features, like dark mode.

Dark UI has been a much more popular request, going back years, so now that the OS supports that natively it made sense to add it. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. With that out of the way, I suspect we'll be working on other things. :)

a.jaffe

Let me say that as someone complaining early in the thread about the lack of markdown formatting in normal notes fields, I’m very happy that the capability has been restored! (But I do see the point that it would be useful to be able to toggle it on and off.)

AGAlumB

@a.jaffe: Thanks for following up! We're with you there. I don't think we'll be able to please everyone, but we've got some ideas that may help a lot of folks.

d_thomson

As a new user of 1Password I just found this discussion while trying to figure out why some of my Secure Notes weren't displaying correctly. It turns out that many of the notes I imported from SplashID have (unintended) markdown characters in them.

After reading all of the above I wanted to add the following:

I think it was a bad idea to have a non-defeatable feature that interprets normal characters in text as formatting. As was stated above, this requires that all users carefully AVOID using these characters. I suspect many more people want simple text than fancy formatted text; so why inconvenience the majority?

Since obviously people have gone to a lot of work to utilize Markdown I think the best solution is a global option to enable Markdown that is OFF by default.

Thanks for listening.