Windows hello and 1password , password frequently required

Hey @DigitalToaster, thanks for the question! With Windows Hello integration enabled, 1Password can make use of Hello to provide a convenient unlock method for 1Password. However, even with Hello integration enabled, your account password is still at the heart of the decryption keys needed to access your data.

When you provide 1Password with your account password, the application performs calculations to derive a decryption key from the combination of your Secret Key and account password, and this key decrypts your password data. With Hello integration enabled, this key is stored temporarily on your system, and Hello can use it to unlock 1Password. However, Windows does not provide a secure place to persistently store the decryption key, so there are a couple scenarios where 1Password will abandon this key to protect it from unauthorized access and will require your account password to unlock - for example, a reboot of the app. There's a list of the actions that will require you to unlock with your account password which can be found here.

However, this issue may be updated in a positive way in future editions of 1Password. Windows 11 requires a chip called a TPM, which would potentially provide a secure place to store this data, and so we're looking into whether that could provide a way for customers to use Windows Hello more, and potentially safely store the unlock key between reboots, so that you don't have to put it in your password as often.

While we can't promise anything ahead of time, I just want you to know that this is an issue we're very interested in, and continually looking to improve.

I hope this helps!

Ali

You're most welcome @DigitalToaster.

It's definitely something I'm also looking forward to seeing so hopefully we'll have more to share soon 🙂