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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
roustem Thanks. So we have at least a year before we have to move. That gives us time to see how bad the end-state of the electron app is, and make a decision on moving to another product.
1P_Rob1Password Team
Does that work for the Nightly channel?
I have this option enabled, but have to manually install updated so far.
XIII it should be working for nightlies. When it does, you'll see a prompt that says 1Password will update the next time it's restarted, with an option to restart now. If that's not happening, we might want to collect some logs to see what's going on. Let me know.
It leaks memory like crazy
@"Mirek Petricek" thanks for pointing that out. One of my teammates is looking into a memory leak today, so hopefully we'll have that patched up soon.
I've re-installed 8 and the nightly updates are making a difference and it's smoothing out quickly and I feel it will end up being a polished product.
rwakeford thanks for saying so! We aren't going to be happy with a less-than-polished product either.
My big question is what ever happened to the native Mac Password Auto-Fill support your team had demonstrated?
@dppeak we spent a bit of effort on that but we weren't able to get it where we wanted to in Big Sur. With Monterey, we're hoping to re-evaluate. There's nothing related to Electron in the way, though. This would be implemented in Swift and we have a good chunk of Swift in 1Password 8 already.
ref: dev/core/core#6444
I completely understand that using something like Electron and a common back-end written in Rust makes it easier to develop and maintain a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. And I also understand that even for us users there is an indirect benefit because you will be able to iterate faster and deliver new stuff more often.
But we have a price to pay: Such an app very likely can only be an "ok" citizen in any of the supported OSes, but will never be able to offer the best possible UX on any of them. 1PW8 clearly shows that at the moment. UX is ok, but it feels like less a native macOS app than 1PW7. I'm confident that it will be good enough once it has sufficiently matured to be released, but I doubt that it will be really great on any platform.
So, please prove me wrong ;-)
It should be working for nightlies. When it does, you'll see a prompt that says 1Password will update the next time it's restarted, with an option to restart now. If that's not happening, we might want to collect some logs to see what's going on. Let me know.
It did indeed work like that yesterday (have not turned on my Mac today).
I think one of the strongest points of 1Password is and was the native app feel and the design. Going to electron is maybe a business decision but not a users centric decision. Don’t forget a user don’t botter when you will release a new “feature” for the app if it will be in September or later. Take the Apple philosophy “it just works”. That means only release when it is ready and works great. Even if that means postpone it till it’s ready. Only the user experience will count and if the app will be supported on the latest releases and is secure. It stands or falls with that. It’s clear you want to release at the same time new iPhones will be released and iOS 15. The choose to go electron because then older versions of MacOS will be supported,… is bullshit! Users clearly understands that when a computer gets older newer software will not be supported anymore because of new technologies. Also the older versions of 1Password 6 or 7 are still available. Why not make the requirements of the new app that it only support recent versions of MacOS? And for how long is SwiftUI already available? Is it not that going the route of Swift you have one cross-platform user interface layer with iOS,iPadOS,MacOS? And is Apple not willing to help since you are one of the top Apps in the AppStore for years now and are praised by them? It sound for me the quickest route to take but not the best decision for user experience.
I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't feel right to me.
It looks like there is no way back with 1Password. So I decided for myself to look for alternatives. One candidate is Strongbox - Keepass-compatible, a real macOS app, countless applications on all kinds of platforms.
I have until 05.2022 (family account already cancelled) to test alternatives. We'll see how it goes... but as soon as I find something, that's it for me with 1Password. Too bad actually.
roustem I refer to your August 20 post - Part of the initial argument as to why you swapped to electron in the first place was because you wanted to ship by September, and that was an important deadline to meet. I understand development often takes longer than anticipated but can you see from a user perspective how frustrating it might be?
On one hand you're saying 1P8 has built from the ground up to be better for users. You start off trying to do it the right way by using SwiftUI and then because you can't polish it enough to deliver in time for September you make the decision to move it to Electron a technically inferior way of doing it. One that hurts a user experience.
Given you've now pushed the final release date back so significantly can you please dump Electron, start from where you left off and go back to SwiftUI? Electron is completely a no-go on macOS.
1P_Rob I refer to your post of AUgust 20 where you say you tried separate apps and WIndows users would tell you it didn't work. Using both platforms with 1P7 since it came out, this is flat out incorrect. Some Windows users may not have liked it, but i know a lot of windows users who did like it and thought it worked incredibly well.
1P_BenThanks again for sharing your thoughts on this topic.
Part of the initial argument as to why you swapped to electron in the first place was because you wanted to ship by September, and that was an important deadline to meet.
Deadline or not, we made our decisions based on what we believe is best toolset currently available to meet our goals. A deadline was one small factor among many.
Some Windows users may not have liked it, but i know a lot of windows users who did like it and thought it worked incredibly well.
Certainly. 1Password 7 for Windows works and is liked by many. That doesn't diminish that 1Password 8 is a huge improvement in a number of areas, including many that were frequent requests from customers. The majority of our Windows users writing in about it agree.
I hope that helps clarify our stance a little. Either way your voice has been added to a report we have filed requesting alternative front-end tooling.
Ben
ref: dev/core/core#9286
Thank you for the reply.
...best toolset currently available to meet our goals.
I appreciate that - but this is the exact issue, Electron is not the best toolset to meet your goals if it is to have a great, native feeling macOS experience. I'm right have met your goals in terms of reducing development time, complexity etc, but it just absolutely sucks from an end-user perspective.
That doesn't diminish that 1Password 8 is a huge improvement in a number of areas, including many that were frequent requests from customers.
I don't disagree at all - I probably didn't make my point particularly well. Any suggestion that 1P7 didn't work well for Windows users is just patently false, it worked incredibly well. That's not to take anything away from the fact that 1P8 is a huge improvement for Windows users (and it really is) but why does that have to come at the expense of severely hampering the macOS user experience? You've taken a huge step forward with Windows but to do so you've taken about 10 giant sized steps back for macOS users. Can you understand why there are a lot of us who are very angry, and feel let down?
I do not recall anywhere near as much criticism about the user interface/look/feel of previous macOS clients (not to say there weren't other criticisms obviously).
One thing that's been bugging me about 1Password 8. I know the Preferences dialog is not a native window. Would prefer it to be but I get the feeling I am fighting a losing battle over this so i'm over asking for it anymore! :-)
BUT.... You've stated before that you would prefer each app to feel "at home" on each platform. If so, please move the preferences window "X" or close button to the left hand side on Mac. It drives me insane! Even better, remove it altogether and just put preferences in a native Mac window. (ok, that's the last one, I promise!!!!)
Neil
