Why is the top search result default instead of all results?
The way I search — like the vast majority of people in user testing I have done at my place of business — is to type a few things and hit return. Then you peruse a full list of filtered options. It is not to type a few things, stop yourself from hitting return and examine first item on the "suggested list" to see if it is the one you want and THEN hit return, and if it isn't... then continue perusing a list of suggestions in a menu dropdown, and when you don't find a suggestion with what you needed, select "Show all" at the very bottom and finally get the list you should have had at the very beginning.
That former was the old behavior in 1Password, and it is the behavior of almost every other app anywhere ever. Type, hit return, get filtered list. But now it's the latter. Type, hit return, get one result that is completely wrong. Redo the search, and go through three steps to get to the same thing that should have happened when you first searched.
Maybe this unintuitive UX decision is a preferred method for a few people at 1Password, after all, our user testing always shows outliers, so sure... keep it. But for goodness sake, please make it an OPTION, and not the unalterable default. When I type a search, I want ALL results. Every time. I don't want one, unless I slow everything down and carefully follow "procedure."
Yes, you can argue, "Well just hold down command key when you hit return." But since this is behavior used by no other app, I have to train my brain to change behavior for just this one app. And I've tried, but it won't stick. Please just give us the old style back as an option at least.
I have accidentally selected the top result 99% of the time in 1Password 8, and it has been the wrong thing 90% of the time.
1Password Version: 8.9.10
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 13.0.1
Browser:_ Not Provided
Comments
-
Hello @daveu,
Thanks for your message and feedback! The team is tracking a feature request to add some additional options to change the default search behaviour. While I don't have any news to share about when or if this will be implemented, I've included your voice in the feature request for our Product team.
ref: IDEA-I-289
0 -
In addition to what Mike mentioned, I've reached out to our own user research team to see what if any findings they have in this regard. Thank you again for sharing your input on this.
Ben
0 -
Hi @daveu! Hope you are fairing well today.
I was responsible for a large amount of the ux research conducted on the 1Password 8 Desktop apps over the course of almost three years. This was across Mac/Windows/Linux, various age ranges, various countries, various 1Password account holders and account tenures, etc.
From what I can recall, our current approach to search within the desktop app better aligned with user expectations in circumstances where they were trying to quickly find a singular item. This coincides with one of the major use cases of the 1Password desktop apps we were able to identify throughout those years of research where users only really going to the desktop app when they needed to find, adjust and/or organize with something specific in mind. However, even though a majority of our users were better served with this approach, we recognized the need for a way to get to a full search through the keyboard and circumvent the result suggestions. This is where the shortcut you mentioned comes into play as well as pressing up on the directional pad in the results drop down.
I do believe we can do better though, especially when learning from your use case and the muscle memory you've developed from your tech stack. We likely need a preference to adjust the input behaviour within search so we can better serve yourself, longer term 1Password users with muscle memory built up from previous releases, and/or simply folks who want return/enter to complete a full search every time. I'd really like to see us do more to adapt to the individual user overall.
I hope this answer provides you with better insight as to why this path was chosen and really appreciate the opportunity you've provided us to learn from.
Best regards,
Travis Hogan
Senior Product Manager - Authentication
1Password1 -
I wonder if we should make the Cmd-Option-F (Edit > Find) option a bit more prominent.
0 -
Thank @AG_Travis , I really appreciate the response. I can see how the current system would satisfy users with a small set of entries or are just an individual, but as the head of a household (who all seem to rely on me to manage and tidy up their passwords), you can imagine what happens when I search "google" or "apple id" for a family of 6 in a shared vault as well as my own. Plus, I was a user of 1Password from the beginning with entries created all the way back in 2007, so you can imagine the number of search hits I get for any given criteria. An option to see All Results by default would be fantastic. Thanks again.
0 -
"I wonder if we should make the Cmd-Option-F (Edit > Find) option a bit more prominent."
I didn't know about that and after I did it I couldn't tell what happened. Took me a second to see what was going on.
0 -
Sorry but I have to say that 1PW8's search is in my opinion a complete fail. The change made me revert to 1PW7 almost immediately. My workflow is heavily based on search and whenever I search I expect all results to be shown without any extra step or relevance filtering inbetween. This is the way search works in any other application I use.
CMD-OPT-F would be perfect if it would be the default and could fully replace the new search.
I'm using 1PW since version 1 and following the forums for many years. I've never seen complaints about search during this time. But I appreciate that I finally got an explanation why the change was introduced.2 -
From what I can recall, our current approach to search within the desktop app better aligned with user expectations in circumstances where they were trying to quickly find a singular item.
Thanks @AG_Travis for the explanation - FWIW I also find the whole addition of the
cmd+option+f(orctl+alt+fon Windows) thing counterintuitive and frankly just a little bizarre (at least for the primary search function). If you have a perfectly workable search function that is well displayed and integrated into the UI and obvious to every user regardless of platform why add a second obscure duplicate function (that requires multiple keyboard key use to activate & has no UI visual presence for non-advanced users) and its function is different to how the same command works in other apps?The use of the
cmd+option+f(orctl+alt+f) for primary search in 1PW is inconsistent with how it's used by virtually every other app and system around (at least that I know of) - it's primarily for 'find' functionality within a single document, website page or other similar individual instance. In 1PW's case this would be within a single item's details (e.g. searching the text within a single Secure Note) - not doing a full search of the database - hence counterintuitive and not following consistent practice for this function (at least as I know it - happy to be corrected). Can you update thecmd+option+ffunction so it can at least have the option to be used like in most other environments & apps to find text within any fields of the current item you have open (i.e. inside a single vault item - currently it can't and seems to only search item 'names' plus username fields in the entire vault from what I can tell - while the full search function searches URLs and other additional fields - that's just weird and messy - and it meanscmd+option+fisn't really usable as a surrogate search like it's been suggested in this thread).Anyway just my 2¢ on the subject - not wanting to be negative or decry the work that you, the dev teams, everyone else has put into redesigning everything from the ground up and building v8 which I know is a huge undertaking - and if it helps make 1PW robust and secure and more adaptable long-term that is great. But sometimes what sounds like a good idea on paper doesn't turn out to be IRL, or what research suggests people/users/customers want isn't actually what they really want.
0 -
When 1PW8 became available as early access version many users complained about the new search or to be more precise about its new UI and about missing substring search.
A few months later Dave Teare presented a solution for the UI problems - CMD+OPT+F. It works like the search of all previous 1PW version, i. e. just type and get the results in the middle column, no popup window with a few pre filtered results and no extra keyboard shortcut. For me and many others this was usabilitywise a near perfect solution. But it introduced other problems. First of all it's well hidden. And even if someone found it, its placement just next to the sort order button and directly below the "real" search" field feels totally out of place.Im working for ~25 as software engineer. All our products work like 1PW1-7 did and I can't remember a single customer complaining about it. All programmes and tools I use daily have search UIs like 1PW1-7 had. Just simple straight forward type and get results. The only exceptions to this patterns seem to be some search engines and shopping sites.
So please revert the search UI change you made in 1PW8. And on top of that merge all three search/filter/find variants 1PW8 currently supports into just one.
1 -
As an aside I found that the
Cmd+Opt+F(or onWindows Ctl+Alt+F) doesn't work properly anyway (posted here Search no longer searches Notes) - contrary to the title however i found search does search notes and everything else fine, it's the new "Find" function that doesn't. 1PW Team have confirmed they are aware of the issue and working on it - so its being addressed, but it's just another annoyance around the whole v8 'Search' versus 'Find" thing!1 -
Please add an option in settings to make search function as it did in 1Password 7.
I absolutely despise this new Search behaviour in 1Password 8. 90% of the time, what I'm looking for is only revealed when I click "Show all matching items." It's so annoying to expect to see all you items returned when switching only to realize that you have to click again to actually see everything.
0 -
I specifically created an account here to request that the Search option be fixed. It was mentioned that the current Search configuration was chosen to make it easier for people to quickly select what they are searching for. It seems to me that if your vaults contain so few items that you can search and return only one item, you probably don't need the Search option. I have 1000+ items across multiple categories/vaults. The list of things that I could search for that would only return a single item is very short. As others have mentioned, the 'show all' option is how pretty much every other app that has a search field works by default. If you can't fix the default search setting, please at least give us the option to fix it in the app settings/prefs.
0 -
Almost 1 1/2 later and search the UI/UX is still not fixed/reverted. I've just checked all applications with search functionality I use daily. All of them search the same way as 1PW7 (and older) did, i. e. search as you type and immediatly show all results.
In contrast to the findings @AG_Travis mentioned"...better aligned with user expectations in circumstances where they were trying to quickly find a singular item..."
I typically expect to get many results as I often search using substrings/partial words.
Adding different variants of search/find which are partly hidden isn't a solution. Either completely revert this change or at least add an option to revert it with the old behavior being default.
As much as I would like to use 1PW8's new features like ssh integration the awful search experience makes me always revert within minutes to 1PW8. So I'll have to use 1PW7 for as long as possible and if search is still not usable than 1PW7 stops working, I'll have to switch to a different password manager.0 -
At version 8.10.4 and I'm still pining for a "normal" search UX.
It's simple:
- Enter your search term
- Hit Return
In every other app in the universe this filters the current list of items to match the search terms. Only 1Password is in its own little universe of "I know! Whichever item happened to sort first today is surely the one you want!" and never filters the list at all. Maddeningly, it shows the exact result I want, but only in its temporary pop-up that disappears the moment I hit Return.
It should actually not even need the Return keypress and just filter in real time as I type.
I'm not seeing how the current state of dumping the user into the middle of the full list of presumably-unrelated items is in any way superior to a filtered list of only items containing the search terms, given that the Return Key leaves (or would leave) the user with the same item selected either way. If that was the right item, great; if not, now it's easy to find the right one in the filtered list. At least give us a checkbox in Preferences to switch it to expected behavior.
(Never even mind the strangeness of having duelin' "Search" and "Find" commands that return unpredictably different results. "Find" filters the list, but doesn't even have a dedicated input field, and even then confusingly returns a different number of results—e.g. Search in "All Items" may return 5 items, but Find returns 3...what?)
Search is the only thing in 1Password that seems to be messed up, most everything else seems to be quite smooth for me, which is why it stands out.
0 -
Do we have an update on making 1P8's "search" act as a search?
One way to put it is typing and pressing enter is acting as a "quick jump" whereas to get the expected behavior users have to press command+enter to "filter" and show all-and-only the items applicable to the search term.
1Password is the only application I've encountered that behaves this way. I'm trying not to be snarky about this but come on guys this is ridiculous.
1 -
Please listen to your users and make 1Password search sane again!
0 -
It's been almost two years since you introduced the barely usable new search interface, but instead of fixing the problem by at least adding an option to return to the far better search interface of the previous versions, you ignore it. Even @AG_Travis, who did the usability testing that led to this change, has since admitted that a search behavior selection option would have been a better solution.
I've already stopped recommending 1PW since version 8 was released and will stick with 7 as long as possible. If this issue and the other usability issues (item counts, localized dates) are not resolved when 7 stops working, I will switch to another product.
0 -
@daveu, @Boosh, @WhovianJohn, @Pres, @koelsh, and @viswiz
1Password for Mac recently introduced a change in how search works and pressing enter now opens "Show all matching results". You can then look through the total list of results for a search term.
Please make sure that you're running 8.10.24: How to keep 1Password up to date
You might need to completely close and then reopen 1Password before seeing the change. Let me know if this new behaviour helps. 🙂
-Dave
2 -
I just discovered this is the new default behavior when hitting return. The old default of not filtering was so frustrating. Thank you!
0 -
On behalf of the team you're welcome.
0
