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Forum Discussion
1Password 8 - Non-native feel
Like many Mac users, I was greatly disappointed to read that 1Password is moving to Electron. I firmly believe that Electron is a bad framework for app development, and the 1Password 8 beta does not change this opinion. I’ve compiled a list of issues, as I see them. Some are endemic to Electron, while others are simply stylistic choices by the dev team. I will try to omit complaints that are purely personal preference, such as specific color usage.
- The lack of rubberband/elastic scrolling is jarring and unpleasant.
- There isn’t enough visual feedback that the window is out of focus. In particular, the “New Item” toolbar button should fade to a lighter blue when unfocused.
- Many interactions in the app do not have the animations they should, including list expansions, menu displays, checkbox toggling, and modal dialogue appear/disappear.
- Unnecessary reliance on modal dialogues is antithetical to native Mac app development. In particular, the “Preferences” and “About” windows should be … well, windows, not modal dialogues.
- It is unusual for a Mac app to have the “About” page be part of the preferences dialogue.
- When unfocused, 1PW 8 lacks hover states. In order to copy a field when the app is unfocused, you have to click into the window, then click the field again. 1PW 7 only requires a single click and properly displays hover state when unfocused.
- 1PW 8 no longer shows the number of items in a tag/category.
- There is seemingly no longer an easy way to mark or unmark an item as a favorite.
- The account name at the top of the sidebar has a disclosure triangle in the down position, indicating that clicking it will collapse the sidebar entries for that account. Instead, clicking it brings up a popover menu with various actions. (I don’t know whether this behavior is different when you have more than one account. My point is that this behavior is unusual for this type of UI element.)
- The app uses almost 2x the memory footprint of 1PW 7 and 10x(!) the idle CPU usage.
- The app is noticeably slower. Scrolling a long list introduces a delay in displaying icons that is not present in 1PW 7. Additionally, there is flicker and occasional slow loading when changing filters, vaults, and tags. (1PW 7 also has flicker at times, notably when changing login items. It’s far more prominent in 8, however.)
- There’s too much list padding. With windows of identical dimensions, 1PW 7 shows me 10.5 items; 1PW 8 shows me only 7.5.
Are these things ultimately minor? Yeah. Complaining about a preferences window becoming a modal dialogue is about as first-world a problem as you can get. At the same time, I’m paying money for this, and now it feels like I’m going to spend money on a downgrade.
1Password 8 is probably the most native-feeling and best Electron app I’ve used, but that’s like saying the McDonald’s by Disneyland is the best McDonald’s I’ve eaten at. I’ve been a 1Password user for years (I started with 1Password 3) and always held the app up as the only app I unreservedly considered worth a subscription. Now it’s pretty likely I’ll move to something else.
1Password Version: 80200056
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 11.5.1
I uninstalled 1p7 the day the mac beta came out and forced myself to use 1p8. Today I just reinstalled 1p7 and went back. Holy S***. You almost instantly forget just how much better 1p7 is.
I challenge a single dev working at 1P to truthfully tell me 1p8 is better in ANY way. I honestly would love to hear a single feature that's better. It's jaw dropping the difference when you use 1p8 for a few days and then switch back.
Also side note, god damn did I miss 1Pmini. <3 my baby is BACK!
1P_Rob1Password Team
@tiltowaitt thank you for that detailed list! Much of the fit and finish is still to come, and I know in particular we've been investigating some performance issues recently.
@blankspace here's a thread: https://twitter.com/4german/status/1425466303423434764
My favorite new feature day to day is vault collections. I can keep the stuff I use the most in a collection and not have to see all the stuff I share with my parents that I rarely use.
The quick access (mini) feature in 1Password 8 is still really new, so we've got plenty on our list there.
roustemI challenge a single dev working at 1P to truthfully tell me 1p8 is better in ANY way. I honestly would love to hear a single feature that's better. It's jaw dropping the difference when you use 1p8 for a few days and then switch back.
After using 1P8 for a while (well, this entire year) I would never go back to version 7. It just feels outdated and slow. There are too many features to list but my top 3:
- Greatly improved item editing experience
- File attachments that can be added to any item now
- Item location bar that shows the people that have to this item
- roustem
And another feature that was added to the nightly build today:
I would add that Quick Access is shaping up to be a big power boost. I am already loving it even without everything being wired up yet.
roustem I’m curious what aspects of 1PW 8 are faster for you, because that is opposite of my experience. 1PW 8 is noticeably slower, especially when scrolling. Perhaps the lower performance of 1PW 7 are only evident with a sufficiently large vault? (I’ve only got 348 items in mine compared to the thousands some users have.)
Earlier, I canceled my subscription that was set to renew on 8/25. I will likely go to monthly for now unless I decide on a replacement quickly.
- 1P_Rob
@tiltowaitt I can't speak to Roustem's experience, but I haven't really noticed much performance difference day to day. So I did a side by side test using an account that has 3500 items.
Scrolling seemed equally performant to me, in the sense that it was completely smooth. In version 8, if I clicked the scroll handle and dragged it quickly up and down I could see a difference in the rendering. We're talking milliseconds, but it seems like something we could probably improve because I don't see the same effect in the version 8 sidebar with hundreds of tags.
On the other hand, I found that version 7 is much slower to render a list of items when you're switching between vaults, especially when switching multiple times in succession. Version 8 is consistently snappy in that test.
I tried search too and it seemed equally performant.
These are just anecdotal of course and the only things I tried. Day to day I haven't found much difference. That said, we're aware of reports of really poor performance, so that's an ongoing investigation.
1P_Rob @rousten
The OP painstakingly put together a list of specific bugs or performance issues and nobody on the team even acknowledges them or thanks them?
Instead, you start boasting again about how 1Password 8 is more performant based on your test (of which you provide no evidence) or that now you can reveal your password when logging in?
It's like your company's PR strategy comes from the Trump troll playbook.
1P_Rob Interesting. Switching vaults is where I see the biggest performance degradation. That said, we’re talking milliseconds in either case, but I’ve repeatedly seen devs say the new version is much faster while users complain of the opposite.
@FCNV rob’s first reply thanked me for the list.
