Early access and Alfred / Spotlight / LaunchBar (3rd party search integration)

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Comments

  • Smithjw
    Smithjw
    Community Member

    @HRD it's a valid comment but as mentioned earlier in the thread, the old-style integration was much less secure. This model provides a much more flexible way of accessing items. All that being said, if you need the integration now, either use the Quick Access window via a keyboard shortcut or roll back to 1P 7 :D

  • HRD
    HRD
    Community Member

    Hi @Smithjw, I am going to leave this with their developers to sort this out. It is only more secure if it works!

  • @Chris Messina: I’m not sure of the cause of the json format error there but it could be you have an item in a format that the workflow isn’t expecting. As a test, could you try running opbookmarks to try and narrow down the problem? Assuming it works we can try adding some logs to the workflow to narrow it further.

    ++dave:
    1Password Founder

  • @ag_tommy just found a reproducible bug and Vitor at Alfred is implementing a fix. They’re also making an optimization while they’re there which could very well side step your issue entirely, @Chris Messina. Let’s save the above test for later as I’m pretty hopeful these updates to the workflow will help.

  • cortig
    cortig
    Community Member

    @Chris Messina

    And now I got this error:

    I got the same error.
    The Github page for the workflow already has https://github.com/alfredapp/1password-workflow/issues/4 for the issue.
    The last post concluded:
    That’s an error in your connection, or in the communication between their tool and their server. Nothing I can do about that. Try again and it should reuse data it already downloaded.

    I tried quite a few times and got the error systematically (after quite some time). I’ll try again a few more times to see if I can get it to complete, but it’s not looking great :-(

    Corentin

  • cortig
    cortig
    Community Member

    I tried quite a few times and got the error systematically (after quite some time). I’ll try again a few more times to see if I can get it to complete, but it’s not looking great :-(

    I updated the workflow to version 2022.5 and now it’s proceeding faster and completing the initial setup.

    Corentin

  • hoium04
    hoium04
    Community Member

    Thank You!! I got it working with the latest workflow update!

  • HRD
    HRD
    Community Member

    Hi @dteare, All is good with the latest workflow update.

    One question - Will workflow update automatically?

  • cortig
    cortig
    Community Member
    edited April 2022

    Workflows belong (and are managed) by their respective creators and from what I can tell, the Alfred workflow used here hasn’t been created by @dteare. the 1Password folks are only providing the CLI tools that allows for the interaction.
    The workflow was created by Vítor Galvão who works for Alfred App.

    From what I can read the workflow should be able to auto-update (although from what I read, workflows only check for updates once a day when/if you run them — so in this case, with a bunch of rapid bug fix updates, it had no way to auto-update for me).

    Corentin

  • HRD
    HRD
    Community Member

    Hi @cortig, Most useful information. Thanks.

  • Chris Messina
    Chris Messina
    Community Member

    @HRD yes, the Workflow uses Vitor's OneUpdater to periodically check for releases:

  • dtoub
    dtoub
    Community Member

    I give up. I installed the workflow, could not get it to configure, and despite deleting and reinstalling, I cannot get anything to happen if I type 1p in Alfred other than to have google search for 1p or whatever I follow 1p with. This is not something most people are going to be able to install comfortably, and I'm clearly not doing it correctly despite being pretty tech savvy. I'm abandoning any idea that 1PW 8 can integrate with Alfred, despite the claim in the Alfred update that it does. Not sure if the issue is with Alfred or 1PW but I'm not wasting any more of my time with this dreck. Either it works the way it did in 1PW 7 and earlier, which was seamless, or it is not possible. And anyway, to have to type 1p followed by the specific item in 1PW I want to open is not what I think will work for me anyway.

    I've resolved to use 1PW 8 over these many months despite many many shortcomings, and despite my initial optimism, have grown just as frustrated as many of the original disgruntled posters from the summer. They were quite correct. I hate to think how much work it will be for me to support others in my household if they ever have to ditch 1PW 7 and move to 8 because 1PW 7 stops working with a future macOS update or whatever.

    Or are there plans to have a better solution in place than this command line process that, at least for me, isn't working? I've used Unix for years yet I cannot for the life of me get 1PW to integrate with Alfred.

  • cortig
    cortig
    Community Member

    To be fair @dtoub, that’s more of an Alfred issue than a 1Password issue.
    I’ve struggled with it a bit myself as well, but eventually got it to work. Same as you, at the beginning, the 1p shorthand wasn’t doing anything (no idea why — I occasionally have this issue with Alfred with different workflows).
    Instead, I used the alternate shorthand for the advanced options: :1pextras
    And then I selected the option to Add an account. The Workflow then opened up the Terminal and proceeded adding my account from there.
    Not ideal, but it worked. After that, the standard 1p shorthand started working like a charm.

    Corentin

  • I had some similar struggles at first. The two issues I had:

    1. There was an update for Alfred available that I had to manually check for and install — I wasn't prompted to update as I usually am
    2. I had a custom terminal set up in Alfred's preferences for a terminal app I no longer use (and did not have installed)

    After resolving both of those things, it has been smooth sailing.

    Ben

  • dtoub
    dtoub
    Community Member

    Understood. Is there a way to get back to baseline so I get the prompt to link a user account? Deleting and reinstalling the workflow does not do that.

  • cortig
    cortig
    Community Member

    For me, I could trigger the setup again through the :1pextras shorthand in Alfred.

    Corentin

  • dtoub
    dtoub
    Community Member

    Thanks Corentin! That made all the difference. I also installed the updated 1PW command line tools and all is now good.

    Still, would be nice if at some point this could be nothing other than a checkbox in Alfred preferences as it was with earlier versions. I just suspect this might be more hassle for some folks than it's worth.

  • cortig
    cortig
    Community Member

    I’m glad it’s finally working for you too.
    And I agree, it shouldn’t be so hard…

  • Chris Messina
    Chris Messina
    Community Member

    @dtoub @cortig I'm curious if having a more secure product is valuable to you relative to the hassle of getting it set up? IOW, would you be willing to accept the trade off of an easier-to-activate experience for a less secure approach?

    Maybe @Ben can speak to some of the trade-offs that lead to the current design and how they made the decision to err on the side on better security.

    Of course the preference is to be both more secure and easier to use, but these tensions are not always reconcilable.

  • cortig
    cortig
    Community Member

    I’m happy to keep it secure. I’m just thinking that the initial setup in Alfred was not a pleasant experience. To their credit, they just rolled-out the workflow and actively worked on correcting the issues.
    I’m sure the workflow will get better over timed this will be a thing of the past.

    Corentin

  • dtoub
    dtoub
    Community Member

    I think both are important of course but in the case of Alfred integration, what is the security issue and was it present in 1PW 7 and earlier? If the security issue is more theoretical than real, I'd prefer ease of use.

  • Chris Messina
    Chris Messina
    Community Member

    what is the security issue and was it present in 1PW 7 and earlier

    Hoping @ben or someone else on the team can elaborate.

    Might also suggest that the existing Alfred integration may need to be deprecated at some point if it is truly insecure.

  • what is the security issue and was it present in 1PW 7 and earlier

    There wasn't a security issue per se, but rather the approach taken in earlier versions of 1Password weren't ideal. To allow for the integration we needed to write out plain text files (unencrypted) with the following metadata of each of your items:

    • title
    • description
    • URLs
    • vault name
    • item category
    • account name
    • vault identifier
    • item identifier

    This wasn't ideal for privacy and it also added another set of files that needed to be kept in sync. These reasons prompted us to hide this option in the Advanced section of Preferences and to default it to off.

    When we went back to the drawing board in 1Password 8 we recreated everything to take performance and privacy to new levels and bringing this option forward didn't align with those goals.

    Thankfully the 1Password CLI is now available and as we've seen Alfred has already started to use it. With that said, this is still the beginning and there's more we need to do with the CLI to make integration easier and more performant. For example, automatically bundling the CLI with 1Password (or having a button to install it) would be great.

    Sorry for the bumpy ride everybody. And thank you for trying things out and sharing your experiences. 🤗

    ++dave;
    1Password Founder

  • dtoub
    dtoub
    Community Member

    That makes sense and thank you for that great explanation.

  • VirgilBoy
    VirgilBoy
    Community Member

    Got mine working! I had to utilize the :1pextras trick on my second attempt. Thanks to @cortig for that hint!!

    Definitely a PITA setup but nice to see this functionality again...

  • Great to hear you got this working, @virgilboy! We look forward, as Dave mentioned, to further exploring what we can do (and make possible) with the CLI. 😃

  • VirgilBoy
    VirgilBoy
    Community Member
    edited May 2022

    Unfortunately, my 2nd Mac was also working, but this morning I discovered that the 1PW/Alfred feature is broken. I used the :1pextras command to try and revive things. In terminal, I am signing into 1PW but the very last entry (my password) is blocked. You see a symbol, but I am not sure what that means.

    Is the :1pextras command part of 1PW CLI? Any idea why I cannot finish the signin??

  • @VirgilBoy

    It is a feature of the macOS Terminal that nothing is shown as you're entering a password. If you type your password and then hit enter/return, does it work as expected?

    Ben

  • VirgilBoy
    VirgilBoy
    Community Member
    edited May 2022

    Hi @Ben

    OK...I don't recall the method of entering the password on the mini being like this a few days ago. Following your tip, I just typed the password (in the blind) and it is working again.

    Previously, seeing no apparent response to copy/paste or tying manually, threw me off.

    Thanks, John

  • Hi @VirgilBoy, good to know that it's working for you. We'll be here for any future follow-up. 👍

This discussion has been closed.