Is the 1Password 8 Mac electron app experiment about over so the dev team can get back to building a quality native app for the Mac? The other option is staying on 1Password 7 till I move my family account and three companies I consult with to another platform. I loved 1Password 7, 6, etc., but this version 8 is a mess. (Granted, it's better than most electron apps, but that is not a high bar) 1Password Version: Not Provided Extension Version: Not Provided OS Version: Not Provided

Hi jdwusami, 1Password 8 for Mac is still in development, but it will be, as planned, a hybrid app: the back-end core, where most of the computational work goes on, is written in Rust, and the front-end is Typescript and React bundled with Electron. This design has been chosen for a number of reasons - including security, performance, and user experience consistency - that have been discussed in a number of blog posts, as well as here in the forums. In short, if you feel that Electron is an absolute deal-breaker, and that you cannot under any circumstances make use of an app that includes it, then you can certainly stay on 1Password 7, although as an older SKU this will not receive the same kind of feature updates that 1Password 8 will. It's clear that you're passionate about 1Password, and we appreciate that. With that said, we feel that 1Password 8 is a very strong offering, and improves on its predecessor in a number of key ways. We are also dedicated to making it more robust, featureful, and performant on an ongoing basis too - so the Stable release of 1Password 8 for Mac, when it comes, won't be the end of the story - just as 1Password 7.9.828 is a substantially better product than earlier versions of 1Password 7. this version 8 is a mess. (Granted, it's better than most electron apps, but that is not a high bar) If you'd like to share any aspects of the app that you think aren't up to par, I'm happy to listen, and to pass the feedback on to our development team as well.

I read the blog post, but it’s still a massive mistake to a great native Mac app. It would be best if you listened to your customers on this as everyone is pushing back against this mistake for a reason. Granted, I agree with this author that the blog post is an indictment of SwiftUI. "Apple shares the blame, though. If today’s SwiftUI was truly the One True Tool to unify Apple’s platforms that it’s meant to be in the future, the Mac version of 1Password would be presented in SwiftUI. And perhaps in a year or two, that will happen—after all, the SwiftUI version of 1Password is right over there on iOS, ready to make the move when it’s feasible." When feedback to an announcement is as follows, the developer needs to reconsider the misstep. I still hope for a SwiftUI Mac app as I won't migrate to yet another horrible electron app as I have to deal with when using Microsoft Teams. https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/08/16/users-lobby-1password-to-abandon-new-electron-version

Hi jdwusami, thanks once again for the feedback. I respect the fact that you think going with Electron is a mistake - but again, there were a number of engineering and design reasons behind this decision, so our focus here has been what's going to provide the best experience for the customer, as it has been from the beginning. If possible, we'd love to hear about what specific concerns you have. Does it have to do with the UI? Or how certain workflows in the app? How security measures are implemented? These are all things we are constantly working to improve and perfect. What I'm trying to say is: not all apps that make some use of Electron are the same, and the fact that 1Password 8 uses it doesn't make it equivalent to other apps that provide a sub-par experience (not singling anyone out in particular here). Rather, we're dedicated to making an app experience par excellence, and so far we've found that the best way to do it is with a combination of languages I mentioned in the post above, which includes (yes) Electron as part of the overall product. In case you're curious, here are a few resources around this topic: Our electron hardener, which we have provided for free to the community so that other developers can use it as well: https://github.com/1password/electron-hardener Mitchell Cohen, product lead at 1Password, discusses Electron app hardening at Northsec conference: https://nsec.io/session/2021-how-to-harden-your-electron-app.html Users on Reddit have noted that 1Password's performance is: really good! https://www.reddit.com/r/1Password/comments/o0f3r9/introducing_1password_8_for_windows_early_access/h1vjtr6/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 And it's hard to say it better than Roustem did here: https://1password.community/discussion/comment/608477/#Comment_608477 "We are trying to build the best experience possible with the tools we have today. 1Password desktop app was rewritten from scratch several times and if there is a better technology with clear advantages available tomorrow, we will be there to adopt it. We argue the differences between AppKit, SwiftUI, Catalyst, Electron, Tauri, etc but it is also a very low-level discussion in many ways. It is very important for us to make 1Password better as a product: add features that were on the back-burner for years, make it easier to new users, make it more powerful for advanced users, support both individual/family and business customers, try to not break existing workflows that people had for years and at the same time also create new better ones." And in truth, this has already begun to happen. We've been able to roll out a number of new features in just the last few months thanks to the streamlining of processes that the current approach makes possible. The apps will benefit across the board as a result. 👍

jdwusami Best to move on at this point (or stick with 1P7 for as long as possible). Electron isn't going anywhere, despite the massive user complaints. AgileBits has made their decision, and no amount of legitimate complaints and suggestions will change their mind. I've said it multiple times before, but watching what has happened to a company as beloved as AgileBits over the past many months is truly heartbreaking.

PeterG_1P That reddit thread you link to is about the Windows app, which is hardly indicative of the state of the Mac app. To put it nicely, the Windows version of 1Password 7 was not great, so even an Electron app will be better than what was there. On the Mac, however, 1P7 was (and still is) an absolutely beautifully designed application. And despite the strides that have been made with 1P8 for the Mac over the course of this beta period, it simply cannot hold a candle to 1P7 - and it will never be able to as long as it is an Electron app.

1Password 8 Mac Electron App Experiment

Ivan_K
Occasional Contributor
3 years ago
Thank you for the info, Ben!

For sure I did prefer the looks of 1P v6 with it's fully light UI, compared to what v7 offers...

This attention to details will give more reasons to jump on v8 once some missing futures are back (ability to drag fields in items is #1 missing feature in my book).
1P_Ben
1Password Team
3 years ago
You're welcome. 😃 I wish I could be more definitive as to when it'll be coming, but building in re-ordering of fields is a high priority item for the desktop team. There were a couple of other things we had to get out of the way first (.pkg installer for Mac, .msi installer for Windows, etc), but with most of that work wrapping up I'm hopeful re-ordering fields will be next up. We're also hoping to make some improvements to search.

Ben
Former Member
3 years ago
1P_Ben PeterG_1P dteare

I'm I right in assuming that all customer feedback is thrown out of the window because "you know better"?

Customers: "categories as dropdown are awkward and bad UX". You: "we don't care, we're keeping them"

Customers: "the new 1Password Quick Access is nearly unusable, requires too many clicks to get anything done etc." You: "we don't care, click on those three vertical dots for more clicks"

Customers: "the new search sucks compared to version 7, it creates an unusable dropdown instead of a filtered list, requires additional clicks etc.". You: "we don't care. Our great electron framework built for speed can't handle displaying filtered lists, so nah, not going to fix it"

Customers: "can we re-arrange fields?" You: "yeah, maybe, it's high priority as we said a year ago, but it's so high priority that it will take another 5 years, or nah"

Customers: "detailed descriptions of UX issues, https://1password.community/discussion/122629/15-minutes-of-use-some-feedback" You: "hahahaha, as if we cared, discussion closed"
viswiz
Regular Contributor
3 years ago
@dmitriid you forgot to mention the item count😉
From a well known, widely accepted standard implementation in all previous versions of 1PW to non existing, to one day of standard implementation to finally ‚we‘ve hidden the item count at two different, hard to find places‘
1P_Ben
1Password Team
3 years ago
I understand the frustration when things aren't happening as fast as one might like or aren't happening as requested. I promise the team will evaluate all the feedback we receive and do our best to incorporate it. I posted in this thread 8 days ago concerning how we had accomplished one bit of customer feedback. We're working on more every day. We can't always do precisely what customers ask us to do, but we're always trying to improve the experience, and customer feedback is a big part of that.

Ben
Former Member
3 years ago
1P_Ben PeterG_1P dteare

I understand the frustration when things aren't happening as fast as one might like or aren't happening as requested.

No. That's not the problem. The problem is that you willingly break useful functionality, and go out of your way to defend the bizarre decisions. Sorry, defend is too strong of a word. What you do is say "we're sticking to what we've done", no explanations or rationale offered.

I posted in this thread 8 days ago concerning how we had accomplished one bit of customer feedback

Oh wow. You fixed accent colours. And it only took you 6 months from the original request. Only one, minor issue from 5 listed in the feedback. How about addressing the other points? I shudder to think how long it will take you to fix those.

Forum Discussion

1Password 8 Mac Electron App Experiment

Recent Discussions

1Password not recognizing Barclays website

URL private link opening

Feature request: Warn before archiving an item

Can't log into 1Password app on my pcs after recent update.

Standalone Safari Extension Without App Store