Prevent from having to unlock over and over again?

I'm a mac and windows 1Password user and sincerely love the product, but one thing that bugs me in the windows version is that after each browser restart and when using e.g. one instance of chrome and one instance of firefox in parallel.. I always have to 'unlock' with my master keyword. Isn't there a way to unlock only once? I can disable locking on screensaver/sleep.. but if I unlocked once it should (optionally) be possible to remain unlocked for the whole windows session. Especially the re-unlocking-after-browser-restart is getting annoying.

Is there any way to accomplish this?

Cheers and thanks,
-J

Comments

  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2010
    Windows works a little differently from Mac OS, in this respect. You can read about it in Why is the 1Password data file locked? in the FAQ section of the user's guide.

    That said, "unified locking/unlocking" is on our short list of features to investigate for future releases. Note that there's no information available on which of those features or others might be implemented or when they might become available.

    Thanks for your patience!
  • I use this on my Macbook 10.6. I thought great now I can put this on my husbands Windows 7 desktop and we can finally be synced. He tried it and because of having to unlock all the time he refuses to use it. He's reverted back to Roboform :(

    Please make this an option for those of us who just want syncing and don't care about locking/unlocking.
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited January 2011
    Zenara25, welcome to the forum!

    I'm sorry to hear your husband's experience wasn't positive...or, more precisely, that it was positively negative. :(

    We can't simply forgo locking of your 1Password data, as bad things do happen—computers get stolen, for example, and you'd want to know your data wasn't available to the "bad guys."

    We do intend to look into ways to unify the lock/unlock status, though, to make 1Password for Windows behave a little more like 1Password for Mac, in this respect.

    Thanks for your patience!
  • DBrown wrote:

    Windows works a little differently from Mac OS, in this respect. You can read about it in Why is the 1Password data file locked? in the FAQ section of the user's guide.

    That said, "unified locking/unlocking" is on our short list of features to investigate for future releases. Note that there's no information available on which of those features or others might be implemented or when they might become available.

    Thanks for your patience!


    Another user who thinks this should be closer to the top of the shortlist, however it is accomplished. I agree that I don't want my data stored in plain text though.

    Corey V
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    Grennum wrote:

    Another user who thinks this should be closer to the top of the shortlist, however it is accomplished. I agree that I don't want my data stored in plain text though.

    Thanks, Corey.

    Just to be clear: it's not a prioritized list, and there's no guarantee that (much less when) the listed enhancements will be implemented. It's just the things we think are useful and intriguing and possible and...
  • John L
    John L
    Community Member
    edited February 2011
    I would like to throw my vote behind this issue, too. It's a serious pain and the *primary* reason I went with a competitor's password management solution. The second reason is that they support mult-factor authentication with Yubikeys but I digress. :)
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    Thanks for your comments, John!
  • Peter B. Schaufuss
    Peter B. Schaufuss
    Community Member
    edited February 2011
    Count me in as well.

    I actually have 2 issues regarding the performance on Windows:

    1. First time I use 1Password after booting the machine it takes quite a long time to load - it would be nice to have it load on bootup so it's always available.

    2. The locking issue mentioned above - I would like to be able to set 1Password to stay unlocked once I'm logged into my PC, like I can on OS X.

    I understand the security concerns, but I'm on a corporate PC, where Windows itself lock when not in use - and really, it should be no different than using it on a Mac with autologin and the keychain.
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited February 2011
    Peter321 wrote:
    1. First time I use 1Password after booting the machine it takes quite a long time to load - it would be nice to have it load on bootup so it's always available.

    You can have 1Password load on system startup by adding it to your "startup" folder. You can make 1Password always available by never closing it, once it's been launched.

    2. The locking issue mentioned above - I would like to be able to set 1Password to stay unlocked once I'm logged into my PC, like I can on OS X.
    ..really, it should be no different than using it on a Mac with autologin and the keychain.

    If only Mac OS X and Windows (not to mention Internet Explorer and Safari) were identical, life would be so much simpler. ;)

    As noted in Why is the 1Password data file locked? in the FAQ section of the user's guide, there's no system keychain in Windows in which to securely store your master password.

    I realize we all occupy different points along the security-convenience spectrum, but for me leaving 1Password unlocked all the time would be like having a really fancy security system on my house but never turning it on...or maybe like leaving the bank and vault open while all the employees go out for lunch. :confused:
  • Zenara25
    edited February 2011
    DBrown wrote:
    I realize we all occupy different points along the security-convenience spectrum, but for me leaving 1Password unlocked all the time would be like having a really fancy security system on my house but never turning it on...or maybe like leaving the bank and vault open while all the employees go out for lunch. :confused:


    In our household there's only my husband, myself and our security dog (a Doberman). So between our Doberman, having Windows automatically lock, and only using our desktop on a wired internet connection our passwords are as safe as we need them to be.

    As I've said before, allowing users to keep 1password unlocked would be a great 'option'.
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni
    Zenara25 wrote:

    In our household there's only my husband, myself and our security dog (a Doberman).


    In our household, my wife is the doberman. I hope she does not read this forum.
  • Sophia
    Sophia
    Community Member
    Too funny!

    I have a suggestion actually, I leave my Chrome browser open most of the day, and every 20 minutes (or so) I have to unlock 1PW again - and againandagainandagain. Is it possible to create an option menu in the Chrome extension where you can set the time to leave 1PW unlocked? I could set it to 4 hours at my desktop computer and forget about it for the day. Just an idea to make life more pleasant :)
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni
    Sophia wrote:

    I leave my Chrome browser open most of the day, and every 20 minutes (or so) I have to unlock 1PW again


    You can tweak your Auto-Lock settings here: File > Preferences (Ctrl+P) > Security
  • Sophia
    Sophia
    Community Member
    Thanks, what what I did in the program itself, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the Chrome browser?
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni
    Sophia wrote:

    Thanks, what what I did in the program itself, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the Chrome browser?


    It should work, might you might want to shut down Chrome and re-launch it.
  • Sophia
    Sophia
    Community Member
    You're quite right, that did the trick! Also I switched off "lock when the screensaver comes on" and all is well now :D Thanks!
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    Thanks for the follow-up, Sophia, and welcome to the forum!
  • +1 for this. I noticed that even though I only just unlocked my passwords through the browser extension it still isn't unlocked in the application. I've only been using 1 password for a couple of weeks now and I feel like it has helped me type fewer different passwords and to increase the complexity of the passwords that I use but it has not decreased the number of times I am required to type a password. In fact, I seem to be typing my 1password password more than I ever typed passwords before when I was relying mostly on Chrome Sync. I can think of many ways to secure the password but ultimately the only way this can work is if you make the policy decision to store passwords which seems to be fine for OS X but not anything else. So, I guess you're not really fundamentally opposed to storing passwords on principle.
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    We may implement some sort of "universal unlock" in a future version 1Password for Windows.

    In the meantime, remember that the product is named 1Password, rather than PasswordOnce. ;)

    As for storing passwords, that's exactly what 1Password does. It's only your master password that's never stored.
  • markfaine
    edited December 2011
    You're equivocating, I think you know I was referring to the master password. It just seems that there is just a little hypocrisy with the way the storing of passwords as a policy is currently enforced. OS X users are like first class citizens and get to store their passwords for convenience sake (even at the expense of increased security) but everyone else is told that agile is entirely against the practice of storing passwords period, full stop. Which is it?
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011
    DBrown wrote:

    As for storing passwords, that's exactly what 1Password does. It's only your master password that's never stored.

    This is the 1Password for Windows forum. 1Password for Windows never stores your master password.

    In 1Password for Mac 3.8 and earlier, which runs on Macs, which have a relatively secure built-in OS-level keychain, you have the option—against our advice—to store your master password there. That option has been removed in 1Password for Mac 3.9.

    I hope that's sufficiently unequivocal.
  • Michael Will
    Michael Will
    Community Member
    +1 vote for this functionality. Having a unified unlock on windows, or at least the option to keep the chrome extension unlocked even when the browser is closed, would be a huge increase in efficiency for me with little impact to overall security.

    Thank you,
    Mike
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni

    Having a unified unlock on windows, or at least the option to keep the chrome extension unlocked even when the browser is closed, would be a huge increase in efficiency for me


    Assuming you're running our new Chrome extension, have you tried this?
    1. click on the 1P button
    2. click on the gears icon in the lower-left corner
    3. click on "Security"
    4. make sure "Enable Universal Unlock" is turned on

    Now when you close-and-relaunch your web browser, there should be no need to unlock 1Password.
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni

    +1 vote for this functionality. Having a unified unlock on windows, or at least the option to keep the chrome extension unlocked even when the browser is closed, would be a huge increase in efficiency for me with little impact to overall security.


    Welcome to the forum, Mike!

    You can read all about how to do this in Why is my 1Password data locked? in the FAQ section of the user's guide, which is chock full of useful information.
  • chriskeeble
    chriskeeble
    Community Member
    +1 for this. I have security in Windows and would like the option to have 1Password not force me to enter my master password every time I boot Windows, or start a browser.

    Please provide this option in a future release?

    Cheers,

    Chris
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    1Password will always prompt for your Master Password on a fresh boot. You will also need to unlock the extension after a fresh boot. With Universal Unlock enabled, though, the unlocked state will be preserved across restarts of the browser (just not Windows).

    If you are having some trouble, please start a new thread. I'd be happy to provide further assistance. :)
This discussion has been closed.