1Password 4

Hello @cstina13,

Thank you for contacting us and using 1Password! We would not be here without you. :)

I agree, 1Password 4 for Windows was released quite some time ago and the technology it was built upon is starting to get long in the tooth. However, 1Password 4 still does a decent job when it comes to local vaults, so we decided to build a new app from scratch and focus our efforts on our 1Password accounts.

This new app (with new design and everything) is 1Password 6 for Windows. It fully supports 1Password accounts, but does not support local vaults at the moment. We believe that 1Password accounts is the best way to use 1Password right now – you won't need to use any kind of third-party software to sync your data, your encrypted vault will be stored on our servers and the the sync will happen automatically. They have other benefits as well:

What are the benefits of a 1Password membership?

Moreover, with 1Password Families account, you will be able to easily share passwords and other sensitive info with your husband. I am using a Families account myself and couldn't be more happier. It is very convenient. :)

So, if you prefer using local vaults synced via Dropbox (by the way, is there a specific reason for that? Just curious :)), you should stick with 1Password 4 for the time being. If you are interested in Families account, I will be happy to provide more info.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Greg

@oryschakj: Thank you for chipping in and the support over the years! We really appreciate it. :chuffed:

If you are interested in using 1Password accounts, please send us message addressed to support+windows@agilebits.com and we will check what we can do for you. We believe that a 1Password.com account and the benefits, increased security, and convenience are the best solution for almost any user and want to bring this to as many people as possible.

As for the local vaults support in 1Password 6 for Windows, I don't have any news for you at this point. To elaborate on this status, I'm quoting a comment by one of the company's founders, Dave:

I’d like to share with you our Windows plans so you know where we are headed. Before jumping in I need to set the stage and explain where we’ve been. Then we can cover where we’re at and finish off with where we’re headed.

1Password 4 is our current official version for standalone license holders. Version 4 is based on the same technologies the first version used when it was released in 2011. Designed since the beginning for standalone licenses, it does this quite well and has support for syncing with Dropbox and even allows you to sync completely offline using WLAN Sync. The implementation was done using Delphi, and while this is a very good and capable programming language, Microsoft has introduced several newer technologies that we wanted to take advantage of.

1Password 6 is our leap into the future that uses these new technologies exclusively and we are in the middle of rewriting everything from version 4 into this brave new world. It’s both very exciting and terrifying. The excitement comes from being able to use all the latest and greatest technologies, and the terror comes from needing to rewrite over 5 years worth of code.

We knew from the start that 1Password 6 was going to be a monumental undertaking and so we tried to keep the feature set as small as possible. At the time we had zero support for 1Password Teams on Windows (our families and personal memberships didn’t exist yet) and we had full support for standalone licenses in version 4. Since we had a working solution for standalone vaults and given the effort version 6 would require, we made the decision early on to focus exclusively on Teams. To this end, 1Password 6 is currently focused exclusively on our new hosted services and so there is indeed no support for standalone licenses or other sync methods.

I know a lot of people are using Dropbox and WLAN Sync and want to use this new version, and I certainly don’t want to do anything to upset any of our longtime supporters. At the same time, we have a lot of plates in the air we need to juggle so we needed to choose what to work on. The choice we made for version 6 was a whole new app focused exclusively on 1Password memberships.

One could question our decision to start from scratch and completely rebuild everything. There are certainly many “post mortem” blog posts from other companies that have taken the same route in the past. Indeed it represents a mammoth undertaking as it takes time to build quality software. In our case, it took over 5 years to make 1Password 4 what it was at the time we decided to start over. We knew this going in and we were indeed a little scared, but our excitement outweighed that. We were excited because we wanted to use the latest and greatest technologies so we could create the best 1Password experience possible on Windows.

Fast forward a year or so and we announced our beta and after toiling away and working our way through the beta process, I was really excited to announce 1Password 6 for Windows a few months later (back in October of last year). It was a good release, but like any “dot oh” release, there are a lot of things to polish and work through to make it really shine. And with this “dot oh” version being a complete rewrite, it’s no surprise that we’re still working through this process.

It would have made everyone lives a lot easier if this release had complete support for all the standalone features but it simply wasn’t possible. I think it’s easy to underestimate the amount of effort involved to roll out support for Dropbox. I know I fall into this trap often myself so I think it would be helpful to elaborate on what’s required.

We can start with the ability to sync your data as it gives a pretty good glimpse of what’s involved to go from a 1Password membership solution to one that also supporting standalone vaults.

Syncing would require us to add two additional synchronization systems: WLAN Sync and Dropbox. Both of these do things completely differently from one another, and both are completely different than how our 1Password accounts sync (accounts sync much faster and have push notifications for live data reload because we have complete control over both the clients and server so we’re able to optimize the protocol and minimize how much data needs to be exchanged). Syncing is one of the most difficult problems in software today and is very difficult to get right once, let alone three times.

And once we add these additional sync solutions, there’s also a lot of tricky things we need to do for conflict resolution along with new windows for adding multiple vaults and guarding against all the other crazy scenarios people can find themselves in. For example, what should 1Password do if you remove your data from Dropbox and add a new data file there? Or what happens if the files on Dropbox simply disappear? Did the user mean to delete the files or was it an accident? Should we import a missing file and thereby delete the local copy? And what do we do when a user restores an old backup or imports their files multiple times? All of these scenarios need to be accounted for and tested rigorously to ensure your data remains safe.

The complexity introduced by distributed data sources is huge. So much so that one of my favourite things about our hosted accounts is 1Password.com is the single source of truth. This allows us to greatly simplify things across the board, both for users, our developers, and support teams.

Now of course that’s just for syncing. For a complete solution we would also need to wire in license validation, create a new trial expiry window and purchase experience, guard against fraud, update our model to support additional data formats, extend our website to support the new license, document things for new users, and the list goes on from there.

All of these things may not seem like a very big deal on their own, but they add up quickly. As such I’ve asked our Windows team to make version 6 the best it can be with an exclusive focus on hosted accounts. Once this is completed, we can take a step back and decide where we go from there.

As much as I would have loved to have had full support for everything, our time is finite so we needed to pick a few priorities and roll with them. There are a lot of additional things going on behind the scenes that we need to complete as well so at this point in time I simply can’t say when we would be able to begin work on this. I’m trying to be as open as possible by saying this is not something we’re working on at this moment, but I can’t pull back the curtain any further than that.

The easiest way forward is to sign up for a 1Password membership. Doing so will not only get you the latest version of 1Password on Windows, but it will also get you a lot of additional benefits that weren’t available to Windows users in version 4. For example, it’s very easy to have multiple vaults on Windows now (before you had to manually add each additional vault) and you can switch between them without needing to unlock each one separately. You also get the benefits of our hosted service, including data loss protection, item history, web access, built-in sync across all your devices, access to 1Password on all platforms, and free upgrades to every new version.

I hope everyone reading this will give our new 1Password membership a chance (we have a 30 day free trial and it’s easy to move over your existing data) but of course you’re free to continue using 1Password 4 for as long as you like.

Anyway, our general plan is clear: we need 1Password to have a consistent feature set and UX across every platform and we’re working our way there. I hesitate to give out any specific ETAs as it’s always hard to make the future reality match today’s plans – but we’re getting closer everyday. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I look forward to sharing more with you in the future :)

Take care,

++dave;

Please let us know if you have more questions. I will be looking forward to your email in our inbox! :+1:

Cheers,
Greg