Is v8 a mistake edition?

From what I've read v8 is a complete overhaul with a new UI, and there is significant feature regression. The good news is that as best I can tell it's being worked on and will get better.

I think it depends on what features you rely and what platform you use. For someone heavily relying on search 1PW8 is barely usable. It took ten months to get an essential feature like sub string/partial word search back. But even with this basic search feature reimplemented search is still a mess. The new UI with its extra window, additional steps, relevance filtering and extra keyboard shortcuts is extremely over engineered.

I think I have experienced similar on rare occasions running 1Password8 on Windows 10 but have not been specifically monitoring for that as an issue. There are other issues as well that mean I am running v7 on my iOS iPhone 12 and iPad Air 4 as I cannot use the v8 upgrade due to the major issues of no option for PIN security (I am completely baffled as to why this would have ever been removed) and also found the issue with dates displaying in the very annoying US format regardless of your device settings extremely frustrating (trying to live with this on my Windows and MacOS for now) as well as the inability to remove completely unnecessary letter dividers in favourites on iOS means half your valuable screen real estate on your mobile phone is taken up with useless spacers/dividers (if you have a list of say 8-12 favourites specifically designed to fit within your phone screen area and are now having up to 12 'dividers' added to the list is painful; as you are then having to scroll some way to get to the last entry which just is illogical and an ergonomically poor design feature).

It's a pity because v8 looks quite good in some ways and I'm sure a lot of effort went into it - but there's been a bit of a fail in these areas around security (the PIN is critical) and user interface & ergonomics...

@ag_mike_d thanks for the acknowledgment - note that the original threads for these issues are (in case you have not already seen them):

No PIN Option - this is in iOS discussion here but believe it impacts all OS versions - although on Windows my use of the Windows PIN does work, but only about half the time (i.e. its flaky): https://1password.community/discussion/132236/pin-lock-option-removed-in-v8

Note also on PIN codes I previously raised the length issue - iOS allows 6 (or even 8 I think) digits but 1Password was artificially constrained to 4 digits in v7 and earlier - so when PIN is reinstated it would be good if it either followed the iOS system or if independent at least let you choose a length (after all other apps like Protomail have easily implemented this when requested or already have it): https://1password.community/discussion/118610/pin-code-length

Date format incorrect and does not follow the system defaults: https://1password.community/discussion/131071/incorrect-date-format

Unnecessary index headings in Favourites / can there be an option to disable these (again this is under MacOS but equally affects all OS types - I find it especially annoying on iOS due to the device size where it take sup a lot of screen real estate - its fine being present in the main list of all items but not in smaller lists like Favourites): https://1password.community/discussion/132324/is-there-a-way-to-remove-the-totally-pointless-index-headings-in-the-list-view

I will try and get the screenshot examples sorted for you ASAP to illustrate the above index headings issue.

Thanks.

@ag_mike_d on iOS as mentioned the indexing letters don't appear - so presume this is by design - however the header instead wastes a lot of screen real-estate. I have also noticed other anomalies that I will mention at bottom of this post.

This is 1Password 7 on iPhone 12 Pro Max (with a favourites list of 10 items designed to ensure all 10 are visible on screen without scrolling, etc):

And this is the new 1Password 8 layout on the same device with the same 10 favourites - only 8 are now visible because of the large amount of screen bandwidth used by the header:

So basically your favourites list gets shortened by 2 items unless you want to faff about scrolling - essentially being a different variation of the issue above with indexing letters - a list of favourites does not fit in the same amount of screen space as it used to in v7. I hate to think what it is like for people who don't have the luxury of a large device like I do (iPhone 12 Pro Max) - They will have less screen to start with, so will lose a greater proportion to the header - perhaps as much as 33% of useable surface area taken?

This is (for me at least) incredibly annoying on a mobile device, especially when needing to switch between apps to do sign ins (such as when login and password fields aren't auto-recognised to allow use of the system password app, or when they are actively blocked from being pasted into - which seems to be becoming more frequent BTW).

NOTE: This (the above paragraph) is also a major reason why removal of the PIN option is also incredibly frustrating and annoying - as 1Password relocks each time you switch apps so constantly re-entering a long passphrase is infuriating when trying to log into a app or site with these constraints (and not wanting to disable the security in 1Password itself).

As for the other issues/anomalies I've noticed:

1. You will note the second screen shot is not in alphabetical order - that is because I cannot figure out how to get it to go alphabetically on my iPhone (iOS) - my main list of all items I have changed to alphabetical and that displays that alphabetically - but the favourites will not follow suit - it always displays in this random order that is not date modified order; I'm guessing its the original date creation order reversed - and I cannot find anyway anywhere in the app to change it from this! (P.S. I'm betting its a programming slip up and someone has forgotten to enable the sorting function on this screen? or perhaps it's not and I'm just too dumb to figure it out.)
2. Also you will note that the v7 screen shot is correctly showing "Favourites" while v8 is incorrectly showing "Favorites" (I am in New Zealand and using New Zealand & British English on my device) - so I don't know again if this is an intentional 'feature upgrade via feature removal' from v8 (like the PIN issue), or a genuine bug; but its another little annoying niggle for non-Americans versus v7 and not honouring system language settings. Curiously enough my date formats in v8 are (now?) displaying in correct format it seems on iOS - so v8 as of today is using the correct date format from the OS settings, its just not using the other language settings like v7 does.

Cheers.

Thanks @ag_mike_d that is appreciated.

Note that re: PIN in iOS there also needs to be an equivalent in MacOS as even 1Password 7 only supported biometric (fingerprint) or Apple Watch - which again is incredibly infuriating if you don't have biometrics enabled and don't use an Apple Watch. A variable 6-8 digit/character PIN is as secure, if not more so, than those options and provides an option for ANY user regardless of what functionality they may or may not have enabled on the device. :-)

Re: Windows and your comment:

Regarding this comment, 1Password 8 uses Windows Hello for the PIN unlock. When you say this only works about half the time, it sounds like perhaps this maybe after a reboot or when the 1Password app is completely terminated. This is expected behaviour as 1Password requires your account password after a reboot. However, if you have a hardware backed Trusted Platform Module (TPM 2.0) in your windows device, you can set the following option through 1Password 8 for Windows so that Windows Hello can persist through system restarts: Use Windows Hello to unlock 1Password on your Windows PC - Manage your settings. Please let us know if this helps!

No, this isn't the scenario - not worried about persistency after a restart - happy to re-enter master password in this scenario. The situation I'm experiencing is when the PC has been running for a while with 1Password open but minimised. So...

Windows 10 PC is set up to lock the screen/screensaver after 30 minutes, and 1Password set to lock after 10 minutes. You start the PC, log in with your Windows user PIN (Windows Hello), you open your browser (with 1Password extension) and you main 1Password app, and for the 1Password app enter your master password, then minimise the app out of the way.
You do a little work immediately and use a password or two out of 1Password via the browser extension (while main 1Password app is unlocked from original master password sign in), then take a break and go away.
An hour later you return to resume using your browser and restore 1Password app - it will after a delay of a few seconds bring up the Windows Hello PIN input for 1Password and allow you to enter your PIN and unlock it - you carry on working as usual for a bit. You go away again...
and return a couple of hours later and 1 of 2 things happen - either (a) the PIN comes up again as described in previous sentence, or (b) it doesn't and you have to re-enter Master Password. You work for a bit and go away again (e.g. PC may have been on and running for perhaps 4-8 hours by this stage).
When you return one of 3 things will typically happen: (c) if (a) happened above and the PIN worked then this time it almost certainly fails like (b) above and you have to re-enter the master password, or if (b) above happened and you re-entered the master password then (d) occasionally the PIN might appear, or (e) more typically the balance of the time (75%+) you need to re-enter the master password yet again, and so on.
And so it repeats infinitum if the PC is on for a reasonable period of time (i.e. several hours or more) and you go away and come back to use it at periodic intervals.

I have been unable to identify an obvious pattern or any other 'events' on the PC that could be contributing other than it starts happening after it's been on and running for say at least 3 or more hours and the Windows screen lock, etc, has triggered a couple of times (where you need to enter your Windows PIN to unlock the PC), and both Windows and 1Password have time delays set to auto-lock after a certain amount of inactivity. So not helpful for diagnosing I'm afraid, but that is the behaviour I've been regularly observing under v8 on my PC (and v7 might have done the same prior to that if it was supporting the Windows Hello PIN unlock, I can't recall for certain).

I suspect it may also be more likely a Windows idiosyncrasy than possibly a 1Password bug, given when the PIN does come up successfully sometimes there can be a long lag and other times its instantaneous - suggesting even when the PC is idle and using minimal processor & memory something takes a bit to 'kick into life' in Windows to activate the PIN GUI input...

Cheers

OK - Thanks @ag_mike_d - will endeavour to investigate further at the weekend and provide info as per your instructions if able to. Will update you as promptly as possible.

There is no doubt in my my mind that the launch of 1P would make an outstanding case study for Business School. Just reading all the various issues raised by Users and Beta Users together with the responses from 1P on how they are seemingly, somewhat, working on these issues but without a timeline is evidence enough of an ill-timed release. Reading the items updated between versions is, sadly, evidence that the senior management of 1P is out of touch with the basic customer base is seems to be convinced its original vision was not only correct but being correctly applied. I feel a lot of sympathy with those employees who are required to answer our many issues. They have a thankless task.

@ag_mike_d had no joy over the weekend but got lucky tonight (Monday) - so have generated diagnostics. Can absolutely confirm and verify that device was NOT rebooted and Password itself DID NOT crash or was otherwise terminated. Instructions followed and support request generated for Windows Hello not triggering to unlock 1Password after windows screen has been locked for 1-2 hours.

Haven't had an automated bot response from the email yet after 20 minutes so will post the ID Number separately once I do get the email.

Thanks @ag_mike_d

(P.S. FWIW the automated bot response email has still not arrived (~15 hours) and its not in my spam folder either - so never received the confirmation email with ID number you quoted above - so that might be another thing for your tech support team to look at).

Just a belated note for anyone who reads this in future that the Windows Hello issue above was resolved back in October (thanks @ag_mike_d for the original assistance); a mix of system settings and some good old fashioned 'operator error' on my part I think! 🙄 So not directly a 1Password issue.