Is there one place with full explanation of how vaults work on Mac, where they're stored, etc.?

@jeffreyrodman - I'm sorry for the confusion. The forum is a place for users to get answers to specific questions. Although we get a lot of "this is my issue too" in here, it's often not the case; certain issues seem like other ones, but aren't, etc. And of course searches on Google which turn up answers from three or four years ago may just as likely to be totally inapplicable any more due to changes in 1Password or in macOS, as they are to still be accurate. It's best to ask us directly if you can't find what you're certain is the correct answer to your specific problem. We encourage people to look around, both here and at our dedicated support site (which, unlike this forum, will always have only up-to-date information about 1Password). But we also are here to help if you can't find the answer you're looking for.

...I realized that signing up made things worse instead of better

I'm sorry to hear that; 1password.com accounts are actually much simpler to use on a day-to-day basis in many ways than standalone 1Password, but if you're an existing standalone user, there is definitely a transition, both literal (of your data) and figurative (learning the new way).

I'm happy to help, but I didn't see much in the way of questions in your post. I'll answer what I can: your 1Password data is indeed in a different place in 1Password 7 for Mac than it was in 1Password for Mac 4-6:

In 1Password for Mac 4-6

• if your copy of 1Password was from the Mac App Store, your data is located at: ~/Library/Containers/2BUA8C4S2C.com.agilebits.onepassword-osx-helper/Data/Library/Data/OnePassword.sqlite
• if your copy of 1Password was from AgileBits: ~/Library/Application Support/1Password 4/Data/OnePassword.sqlite

In 1Password 7 for Mac, regardless of where you got it from, your data is at: ~/Library/Group Containers/2BUA8C4S2C.com.agilebits/Library/Application Support/1Password/Data

Can you say a little more about "best practices?" Regarding what, specifically?

...how this ties in with Dropbox

How what ties in with Dropbox? You mean a 1password.com account? It doesn't - 1password.com is (among other things) an entirely separate sync mechanism -- one that we wrote both ends of (client and server), to handle nothing but your 1Password data, which is why it's a superior method of sync. To be clear, you don't need to have a 1password.com account to use 1Password 7 for Mac or vice-versa; we still sell standalone licenses for 1Password for Mac in version 7.

I'm unclear on your references to Dropbox -- what is it specifically that you'd like help with? Dropbox sync is still available in 1Password 7 for Mac as well, if you have standalone (local) vaults. If you intentionally or inadvertently created a 1password.com account and migrated over your vaults, you don't need Dropbox any longer -- your data is already in sync; just sign into your account on each device you want to use 1Password on, and you're done.

@Jono_A - you're quite welcome. Glad I was able to assist. :)

@macindigo - I'm glad the support page link was helpful in filling in some of the backstory. :)

I value software functionality and reliability more than having the latest shiny new feature.

Doesn't that describe most people? Most people (I assume including you) DO want the latest newshiny...but not if it comes at the expense of the usability of the thing in question. Nobody wants a new iPhone - or a new app - if it doesn't...y'know...work. And it's certainly true that brand-new releases of anything often have bugs in them that slipped past even the most vigilant/careful development and QA process, and also that time and user discovery/input often results in many of these things being hammered out/fixed, resulting in a more stable product overall. So waiting briefly to adopt the latest release of anything is usually at the very least harmless and often prudent.

However, it's also true that there's a downslope to that hill as well -- waiting TOO long in an environment where there are many factors and players can and often does mean that unless one is willing to leave all aspects of one's setup carefully frozen in amber like one of Spielberg's prehistoric mosquitos, inconsistencies and even incompatibilities dangerous enough to result in data loss can result. A casual glance over these forums will show you hundreds of examples of people who, for one reason or another, chose to stick with a very old version of 1Password for Mac -- or perhaps of OS X -- while, at the same time, insisting on the latest and greatest versions of, say, their 3rd party browsers, and it resulted in trouble.

This thread from our iOS forum, is into its 9th page and twelfth month, because 1Password 3 for iOS was a 32-bit app, and as of iOS 11, Apple has removed the ability to run 32 bit apps...and we CAN'T update it because it's not the current version. So anyone still running 1Password 3 for iOS -- which was great in its day and VERY stable by the end of its life -- was and will continue to be completely out of luck as soon as they get a new phone or upgrade their iOS version to 11 or 12. Literally in an instant, a person can go from having dozens or hundreds of items in a fully-functioning copy of 1Password 3 for iOS to losing all their data entirely. Sometimes, we can help recover it, depending on whether they had backups/sync and other factors...but sometimes we can't. That's a direct result of using an old version too long while insisting on making other parts of their setup as current as possible: eventually, stuff just breaks, for any of a galaxy of reasons.

Even in the cases we CAN help people recover their data, it takes a ton of time and effort, both on their part and on our own (witness the steps in that thread, then imagine that we had to cover that same ground individually in private email conversations with nearly everyone in that thread, often over many days, to get an idea of how much time's been spent on it). This is all time everyone involved - the users and us - could've used more productively...and that's in the best of cases. Sometimes, we've had to tell people: I'm sorry but there's nothing we can do for you in this case; your data cannot be recovered. So please believe me when I tell you that we're quite aware that the longer a version's been out, the more bugs get squashed and more stable it can tend to be, but that we just can't recommend users do anything but use the most-current versions of macOS, their browser, and 1Password, for the reasons above. And while we're always tickled to see users here interacting with one another, this isn't a community forum like Reddit or even Facebook; it's a forum maintained and curated by us for the express purpose of assisting 1Password users who are having problems. Thanks for understanding, and for participating.

It appears that this situation developed due to two things. 1: Insufficient research on the implications of upgrading IOS and 2: Not having an application independent backup of 1Password data.

@macindigo: Yeah, as someone who is the one helping most of the people dealing with that particular issue, I really don't think that's a fair assessment at all. After all, this is the logical conclusion of the philosophy you espoused earlier about valuing "trouble-free" and "reliability" over new stuff. I felt a little bit bad writing that because I laughed a little bit, until I realized I was wincing, not smiling. Situations like that suck for people more than you will hopefully ever come to know...but you will if you wait long enough. I think that's was the point Lars was trying to make, and I can tell you from experience that it is painfully true. In practice we can't expect most people to "research" stuff like this, because they don't. Same goes for backups. If the tables were turned, that could just as easily be you or me. :(

Two major shortcomings of IOS and Apple iPhone policy are that there is no user UI into the file system and no straightforward way of regressing to a previous version of IOS. Therefore, in my book, an iPhone cannot be relied upon as the sole repository of data. A strategy needs to be in place that enables complete data recovery without involving IOS in any form.

While I do want to be clear that this isn't a platform for discussing "Apple policy", the thing you're pointing toward has nothing at all to do with iPhones or Apple; rather, it's about the importance of backing up. The fact is that with 1Password.com memberships, there is a solution to that problem for 1Password users: they just never have to think about it (which is good, because most of them won't anyway), as everything in the account is automatically backed up offsite, so even if all their devices are lost, stolen, or destroyed, they just need to sign in with their account credentials to get their data back.

To Agilebits credit, creating an application independent backup is easy to do on a Mac. Export all 1Password items and then use Disk Utility to create a 256-bit encrypted dmg of the export folder.

Indeed. We also have built a backup/restore feature into the iOS app since the beginning. Getting people to use it, however, was the challenge. :blush:

Brenty, thanks for the response although I’m not quite clear on it’s point. It appears to me that, in essence, you’re agreeing with my unfair assessment :-)

I just don't think it's productive to play the blame game. That's why we've built things like account recovery and automatic versioned backup into 1Password.com. I'm glad the technology is available these days for that to be possible. Unfortunately that doesn't help anyone retroactively. :(

I do have a question re the IOS backup. The sqlite database in the backup; is that an identical copy of the IOS working database or something for backup & restore use only?

It's essentially an encrypted SQLite containing the contents of all local vaults setup in the app at the time. It's not really useful for anything other than backup/restore though since we have made changes to the database structures over time.