Naviguating the app painfully slow after update 7.2.2

paulpref

I’ve been using 1Password for iOS on my iPhone SE for some time; I have a few 1Password.com accounts and a couple of local vaults synched over Wifi.

I’m on iOS 12.1, and I do not remember ever having serious issues with 1Password iOS until yesterday, when I updated to version 7.2.2.

The first startup took 1Password several minutes to become responsive, during which I though it had frozen, and force quit it a few times until I realized, no, it would eventually respond. Now most interactions are painfully slow: switching between vaults, entering an item just to view it’s contents, but editing, as well. In the—I’m translating from French—Settings tab, clicking on “Help”, and then “Get Help” just freezes for nearly 20 seconds before the 1Password Browser comes up.

I’ve disabled Wifi synching to see if that would change anything, but no change.

My usual reflex is to delete the app and start over, but that’s quite a bit of setup work, so I’d like to make sure I shouldn’t be doing something else or if I can provide more useful information while it’s in this state.

(I have Apple app analytics for third-party developers enabled, so if it actually crashed, there may already be something available for you.)

Of course, in the meantime, 1Password is now unusable—for all reasonable definitions—on my phone.

paulpref

A second observation : sometimes, when switching vaults, the vault switcher goes away and the app stays responsive, but the “Categories” view shows contents of the old vault, even though entering “All the items” (again, translating from French, sorry) only shows the items of the new vault. Do that a few times, and then it’s back to the interface freezing. I don’t get this behavior very often. The interface mostly freezes.

Also important to note: as far as I can tell, the other apps I’m using are fully responsive. No signs of general problems with elsewhere in iOS.

Ben

Hi @paulpref

I’m sorry to hear about that. I have a similar setup to you and am not experiencing this with 7.2.2 on either my iPhone or my iPad. I am running newer hardware but I doubt the difference in processing speed accounts for the difference in performance from your device to mine. Do you have any other iOS devices that you could test on? I’d be interested to see if setting up fresh on a different device results in the same difficulty for you.

Ben

paulpref

Yes, I have two other iOS devices with the same basic configuration, but they have one less 1Password.com account (and it’s a big one).

The iPad Air has the same symptoms as the iPhone SE.

The iPad Pro (10.5″) does not appear to have the same symptoms (movement in the app is seamless, synching works fine), but every time I start it cold, it displays the in-app crash report pop up but it almost instantaneously disappears, so I can’t send in the report.

paulpref

I’ll find the time to reinstall from scratch on my iPhone SE and get back to you with the results.

Ben

Please let us know how it turns out. Also -- if you could add each account one at a time and note if/when the app gets slow that may help in tracking down the issue.

Thanks!

Ben

paulpref

I can confirm that with iOS version 7.2.4 all these symptoms have disappeared for me.

I spent a lot of time on this, writing a couple of pages, then ran out of energy trying to whittle it down to something useful for you, after having to file bug reports for two other applications I depend on daily that took around four hours of work to do properly that same week.

In addition to what I described in my first post, I reinstalled the app, and even iOS on three of four devices, and consistently had the same issues, no matter what order I added accounts (WiFi synching or 1Password.com). Every possible interactive glitch—frozen animation while sliding from an item view to the categories list, completely empty categories list, seeing the items of the previous vault when entering a new vault, but being kicked back out of a category because there were no actual items of that kind in the vault I had switched to, and just plain freezing for tens of seconds when attempting to view an item. This was all extremely painful on the iPad Air and the iPhone SE, but it occurred less often on the iPad Pro 10.5 ″. Even installing it on a brand new iPhone 8 and starting with Wi-Fi synching (and letting it complete on the synch screen) yielded a completely empty categories list that was properly populated after force-quitting/restarting the app. (And the other symptoms occurred occasionally there as well.)

I do not seem to be alone in the forums to have various issues with 7.2.2.

Given all the “performance” updates stated in the 7.2.4 release notes that I did not apparently need in 7.2.1 with the same data, I’m getting a not fully baked/tested refactor vibe from the “Cleaned up the item list to improve performance and reduce crashes” and “Searching your items from within the Password AutoFill extension has received a complete overhaul” in 7.2.2.

I have loved 1Password since 2008 and will continue to use it (despite—in a moment of forgetfulness, of course, 1Password works!—being deeply embarrassed by its un-usability while attempting to show it to someone I wanted to convince to use a password manager this month), this long and painful month has made me realize I definitely need a plan B. The basket my precious eggs are in is much more fragile than was my experience until last month :)

(So far, the plan B is a weekly one-way manual .1pif export—on an encrypted disk and immediately deleted—to another password manager. Ugh. Well, nobody said data safety—which includes being able to reliably access it—was easy.)

Anyway, I’ve always felt everyone at Agile Bits is well-meaning and very hard-working, and 1Password continues to be a great product, so thank you for all of it! Keep it up and take care.

Ben

Many thanks for the feedback and the kind words, @paulpref. I'm glad to hear the improvements in 7.2.4 have helped. That said our recommendation of not using a combination of standalone vaults and 1Password.com accounts if at all avoidable stands, even with this new version.

Happy holidays.

Ben

Lawdawg

Hi @Ben, I was having huge performance problems, and those seemed to be resolved from this update as well. Since you are recommending us to not use standalone & 1Password vaults, I have a couple of questions for the practical implications of that.

• I imagine others are in a scenario like me where the standalone vaults are other people's vaults, so I can't just move them to my account, because that's someone else decision, and not the choice they want to make. Therefore, is it a possibility that the 1Password team would make it easier to "disable" and "enable" those standalone vaults on the 1Password app and iPhone? I believe the only way to currently do that is to delete it, but re-adding the vault is a pain.
• Another obstacle I ran in when trying to get rid of standalone vaults is the problem related to the deleted items. Is there a way to transfer the "Trash" of one vault to the "Trash" of another vault? Sometimes I find something accidentally got deleted and need to retrieve it out of the trash, but if there isn't a way to move the trash from one vault to another, that makes the process of completely ridding myself of a certain vault more difficult
• Does the trash impact performance? I have well over 4,000 entries in the trash between my various services. If it does effect performance, then that is slightly problematic because it appears 1Password does NOT allow me permanently delete particular items from the trash. It's an all-or-nothing process.

Ben

@Lawdawg

I imagine others are in a scenario like me where the standalone vaults are other people's vaults, so I can't just move them to my account, because that's someone else decision, and not the choice they want to make. Therefore, is it a possibility that the 1Password team would make it easier to "disable" and "enable" those standalone vaults on the 1Password app and iPhone? I believe the only way to currently do that is to delete it, but re-adding the vault is a pain.

This brings up a separate but related issue which is that we no longer recommend sharing standalone vaults. 1Password Families is the correct solution for sharing 1Password data. The difficulty with both sharing standalone vaults and having both 1Password accounts and standalone vaults added to 1Password is that it adds a rather large amount of technical complexity to your setup, some of which is out of our purview. Sharing via Dropbox was a good solution when it was the only option available, but there is a much better answer now. It is incredibly difficult to troubleshoot "not syncing" issues when sharing via Dropbox is involved. There is little that our support team is going to be able to offer if there are problems resulting from it beyond offering our Dropbox troubleshooting guide:
https://support.1password.com/dropbox-troubleshooting

The difficulty with mixing standalone vaults with 1Password accounts is that it tends to cause massive confusion w/r/t unlocking 1Password and the Master Password. Here is how 1Password handles unlocking:

• If a Primary vault (standalone vault) exists the Master Password for the Primary vault will unlock 1Password. Changing your membership password will have no effect. You can read about how Master Password changes are synced across Primary vaults here: https://blog.1password.com/how-1password-syncs-changes-to-your-master-password/
• If a single 1Password membership has been added (with no Primary vault) then 1Password unlocks using the Master Password associated with that membership account
• When multiple 1Password memberships have been added (with no Primary vault) 1Password unlocks using the Master Password of the first added membership
• Each installation of 1Password only ever acccepts one Master Password. All memberships / vaults are unlocked when 1Password unlocks. If your devices are configured differently with respect to the above rules it is possible each installation will unlock differently from the others.

This causes emense confusion and difficulty for folks who don't have the above bullet points memorized who are trying to change their Master Password. They'll change their Master Password through 1Password.com for example and it doesn't change the password any of their devices unlock with. Or perhaps they really only use one device so they change their Master Password in 1Password on that device and then when they get a new device they can't sign in to their 1Password.com account on it because the Master Password doesn't work.

It just isn't a smooth experience, and so we recommend avoiding it whenever possible. It may not be possible in your case. But if you have to share 1Password data with people I'd highly encourage you (and them) to look closely at 1Password Families. Guest accounts may be able to help with that:

Share with guests in 1Password Families

Another obstacle I ran in when trying to get rid of standalone vaults is the problem related to the deleted items. Is there a way to transfer the "Trash" of one vault to the "Trash" of another vault? Sometimes I find something accidentally got deleted and need to retrieve it out of the trash, but if there isn't a way to move the trash from one vault to another, that makes the process of completely ridding myself of a certain vault more difficult

Not on iOS. On Mac, yes.

Does the trash impact performance? I have well over 4,000 entries in the trash between my various services. If it does effect performance, then that is slightly problematic because it appears 1Password does NOT allow me permanently delete particular items from the trash. It's an all-or-nothing process.

I have not heard of trash affecting performance, and I'd say if you have 4,000 items in the trash and aren't here to complain about 1Password's performance that is pretty good evidence to it not. ;) That said the trash is certainly not designed for long term storage. Just as you likely do in your home the trash should be emptied weekly or so to avoid it growing to an unmanagable mess.

1Password for Mac can be used to delete individual items from the trash, but on iOS it is all-or-nothing.

Ben

Lawdawg

Thanks for the info @Ben. Regarding your notes, I've put some info below:

It just isn't a smooth experience, and so we recommend avoiding it whenever possible. It may not be possible in your case. But if you have to share 1Password data with people I'd highly encourage you (and them) to look closely at 1Password Families. Guest accounts may be able to help with that:

I definitely understand that part, but as I mentioned earlier, it's out of my hands. I haven't had trouble with the vault passwords. However, I do maintain that it seems like a way to help deal with the performance issues would be to enable the activation and de-activation of those vaults so that they only have to be used out of necessity.

1Password for Mac can be used to delete individual items from the trash, but on iOS it is all-or-nothing.

I don't see where/how to delete individual items from trash on the latest 1Password for Mac. When I right-click on a trash entry, it gives the options of "Copy Password, Fill Login in Browser and Select All." When I go to the "Edit" menu, "Delete" is greyed out. At the top left of the item, it gives the option to "Restore" but nothing related to deleting permanently.

Not on iOS. On Mac, yes. [Regarding moving trash from one vault to another]

Similar to what I wrote in the paragraph above, I don't see any way to do this either. All of the "Move to Vault" options in the menu are greyed out when I'm selecting an item in the trash.

Ben

Mea culpa. It appears I was misremembering. It seems if this was ever an option it was quite some time ago. It seems the only way to move items from the trash to another vault is to restore them first and then move them. Also it does not appear individual items can be deleted from the trash -- you'd need to restore any that you do not want to delete and then empty the trash.

My apologies for the confusion.

Ben