Request: "Never" choice for locking app.

Hi @James_Hayden !

Thanks for writing in and providing your feedback!

We realize that not every user is looking to use 1Password for security but instead use it for the convenience. It's a tough balance though. Imagine security on one side of a teeter totter (or seesaw if you prefer) and convenience on the other side. The more you put in one the more things move to that side and we have to try really hard to keep the balance within the range of where most of our users are.

However, in this sense, it's kind of a tough one because 1Password can't just read your data. It does require the master password, which is used to decrypt your data. Without it the application can't read your data. On iOS applications are generally short lived. You open the application, it loads the data, you interact with it, you leave and move onto the next application.

In iOS, you have more memory limits than you do on a desktop application, the result is that applications that were previously running get shifted out of memory as needed so that the current application can use the memory to do its job. 1Password stores the data necessary to decrypt your data in memory, if the application is told by iOS to quit (because another application needs it) then the data necessary to decrypt your data is now gone from memory and we have to ask you for the master password again.

We'd have to do some fairly fundamental changes to this to make your suggestion work I think and it does put us in a weird position of having to provide this option and explain it in a way that makes it very clear that your data is not as well protected. In an application that provides security features as a major pillar having big red warnings that indicate something isn't secure can cause all kinds of feedback that isn't taken kindly so this is something we'd have to consider if we were to ever implement it.

I am fairly sure we don't have this anywhere on our current radar for the immediate future but I'll pass this along to the developers who make these decisions so they're aware of your request. I hope my answer does give some useful information about how this works the way it works now.

You should take a look at the Security settings though, you can loosen them up a bit if you haven't already done so, but you will have to provide your master password after restarts of the device and whenever 1Password is told to quit by iOS, depending on how frequently you use 1Password, this could be almost the same as always unlocked or it could mean you have to do it every time you open the application as it's dependent upon device memory and priorities.

Let me know if that helps or if you have any other questions. We're happy to help in any way we can!

I'm glad that Kyle was able to help, and that you've found the right balance for you as well! It sounds like you should be all set, but don't hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions. We're here for you! :)