Electron

Very disappointing development. Due to this new setup and the high subscription price, I will cancel my subscription.
With Apple's keychain working across all Apple products, I am using 1P less often anyhow.
I guess Agilebits made a trade off between cost savings and losing some customers.

https://twitter.com/NSBiscuit/status/1426377796541157376

A huge amount of people starting to leaving 1password thanks to Electron, including me!
Nice way to kill one of my favorite apps ever. Very sad day.

Thanks for that, @Dilettante. ❤️ I really appreciate the patience and reminder here. I've been using Macs since before they were Macs -- I don't even want to tell you what my first Apple device was. ;) So I absolutely understand the love and insistence many Mac users have for the particular attention required to make an app feel at home.

In return, we will be trying very hard in the coming weeks not to let you - and others who are willing to place their faith in us - down. I will point out one thing regarding the "under the hood" technology: one of primary jobs - perhaps the primary job - of a password manager is the security of users' data. And while we've always led the field in that regard, it's worth mentioning that the new generation of 1Password apps takes data security to a whole new level. I'm aware you may have been referring to Electron when you said "under the hood," since that is definitely what we chose as the toolkit for the front-end UI that users (and that includes all of us here) interact with in 1Password 8, but I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone about all the work that has gone into the back-end that people never really see, but which helps keep their most-sensitive data as private and secure as possible.

I think some perspective is in order. This has been said elsewhere, but its worthwhile to reiterate:

1) This is the team that built 1Password 7, a world-class, thoughtfully-designed Mac app. If anyone can make an Electron app a good citizen of the Mac, it's these folks. Let's have some faith :).

2) 1Password 8 for Mac is a beta. I'll admit that performance characteristics and UI/UE are pretty rough at the moment, but let's reserve final judgment until the 1.0 ships.

Finally, I'll note that I could care less about the technology 1Password uses under the hood. If the app is efficient, thoughtfully-designed, and acts as a good Mac citizen, the particular framework(s) it uses are irrelevant to me. This being said, I've yet to use an Electron app that meets these criteria, so the team certainly has their work cut out for them...

I think some perspective is in order. This has been said elsewhere, but its worthwhile to reiterate:

1. This is the team that built 1Password 7, a world-class, thoughtfully-designed Mac app. If anyone can make an Electron app a good citizen of the Mac, it's these folks. Let's have some faith :).

2. 1Password 8 for Mac is a beta. I'll admit that performance characteristics and UI/UE are pretty rough at the moment, but let's reserve final judgment until the 1.0 ships.

Finally, I'll note that I could care less about which technology 1Password uses under the hood of its Mac app. If the app is efficient, thoughtfully-designed, and implements core Mac conventions, the particular framework(s) it uses are unimportant to me. At the same time, I've yet to use an Electron app that meets these standards, so the team certainly has their work cut out for them.

It is very disappointing to read that the next Mac App will be based on Electron. When I choose 1Password years ago (instead of going with LastPass), it was precisely because it had a native mac app. It was the only reason.

I won't repeat all the concerns that other users have raised in this forum and I hope that this move will be reconsidered.

I have been a user and advocate for 1Password for about ten years now. I started using it because Mac users I respected raved that it was not just a good password manager, but a proper Mac app written by people who care about Mac apps. I got friends and family members, and people who work for an organization I run so I get to choose some of their software, to use it because it was a proper Mac app written by people who clearly cared about Mac apps. On more than one occasion, I have described it as "the BBEdit of password managers" which is the highest praise I can give a piece of software.

Version 8 has thrown all that away. While 1Password 8 may run on the Mac, it isn't a proper Mac app. It does not work or feel like a Mac app. And that's heartbreaking.

There are two kinds of people who use Macs: Mac owners who just got a Mac because they like their iPhone or the only computer company they really know about is Apple and who spend most of their time in Chrome, and Mac users who prefer the Mac because we recognize that proper Mac software is better. The UI paradigm is better. The way the software works is better. If the same program is on Mac and Windows, and properly written to the UI standards of Mac and Windows, the Mac version will be better even if their functionality is exactly the same.

Not all Mac software is good Mac software. I mean, not even all of Apple's software is good Mac software, and that's always been the case: in the 1990s, Apple had a lot of software that dragged System 6 UI elements into Systems 7, 8, and 9, in the 2000s Apple had a lot of Carbon software that never quite felt right on OS X, and in the last few years the first generation of Catalyst apps were... subpar.

But good Mac software? Good Mac software made the whole thing worth it. The more expensive hardware. The (declining over time) compatibility issues. Apple's often-paranoid behavior. Apple's own insufficiently adherent software. All of that was beside the point when you could use good Mac software.

And 1Password was very good Mac software. It felt like it was born on the Mac, written by Mac users, and meant for Mac users. That's why I bought multiple versions over the years, and signed up for the subscription model without blinking an eye. You made good Mac software, so of course I'll give you a few dollars a month or year to keep that going.

And then you dropped this beta of 1Password 8 on us. This is not good Mac software. It does not feel like Mac software.

In 1Password 8, you can't move the preferences window around — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.

In 1Password 8, the close button for the preferences window is on the left — that is now how Mac software is supposed to work.

In 1Password 8, the menubar, which should be the hub from which you can do anything you need to do in an app, has been completely neutered to the point that you can't even create a new item from it — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.

In 1Password 8, you now create new items from a drop down menu inside the window, but that menu isn't a real menu and if the window is too small it cuts off and you have to scroll the blasted menu — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.

In 1Password 8, collapsing and expanding sidebar items is not animated it just happens — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.

In 1Password 8, drag and drop appears badly broken in the same way its broken in all Electron apps — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.

In 1Password 8, the user cannot change or add shortcuts for menubar commands (what paltry few there are) — that is not how Mac software is supposed to work.

Will any of these things, and the dozens of other foreign behaviors and UI weirdness, be fixed before the final release?

I get that SwiftUI isn't where you need it to be yet. I get that Catalyst is something of a pain. But I cannot for a minute believe that apps produced through either of these APIs would be as foreign as this... thing you've produce is. This is not proper Mac software. A ported iPad app that felt and worked like an iPad app would still be more Mac-like than this RAM-hungry, disk-swallowing thing.

1Password 8 works on a Mac, but it doesn't work like a Mac.

AgileBits used to be a company that cared about that. Instead, post-VC money, it seems y'all are now a company that responds to complaints about 1Password 8 on Twitter with "the app is built on Rust!" as though user angst is about the back end and not the wholly, completely deficient user experience of this app.

Electron apps are almost all garbage. Because they encourage people to build lowest-common-denominator UIs. Which is fine on Linux or Windows, where even the best UIs are pretty bad. But Electron, in my experience, cannot be used to build even a remotely Mac-like application. You certainly haven't achieved that here.

I use a Mac because I want my software to be Mac-like. I'm not alone in that regard. I use 1Password because until version 8 it was Mac-like. Even version 7, with its unreliable Safari extension and general bugginess, meets the Mac-like standard.

I won't pay for un-Mac-like software. I certainly won't subscribe to it. I know my subscription, the subscriptions of the family members who just use what I tell them to use, and the subscriptions of the employees whose software stacks I control don't amount to much — and in comparison to the VC cash raining down on you, it amounts to nothing. Yet in the end, if this is what the future of 1Password on the Mac is, you'll lose more than some subcriptions: you're going to lose the advocacy of people like me, and people like the Mac users who recommended your app to me.

That might not ding your bottom line, but it would likely turn your homepage brag about being "the world's most-loved password manager" into a lie.

Extremely disappointing! I'll be forced to use this through my company but looks like we'll be revisiting that decision soon. As a personal app I've been using for years, I bid you adieu.

Electron applications will unfortunately never feel like they belong. There are tons of little details Apple has put a lot of time and effort into that make the Mac experience as great as it is. A lot of this comes for free when using Interface Builder or SwiftUI. A lot of it can't be replicated with Electron.

After using 1Password 8 here are some of my first impressions:
* Scrolling feels lifeless. It's like scrolling a web page. No elastic scrolling and it doesn't look and feel anyway near as smooth.
* Watchtower looks like a web page in a web view, which it basically is. I much prefer the 1Password 7 implementation where its all shown in a list with the ability to filter.
* Resizing text with cmd + and cmd - just isn't the way it should work in a Mac application except for web content in a browser. What's worse is that the UI elements are also resized. UI elements should respect the scaling settings.
* The settings window is modal and stuck inside the application window. It also has an X on the top right. Seriously? It can't even be moved. This is just the kind of crap that make Electron apps bad.
* Pull down menus can't extend past the boundaries of the application window. This is against the way they should work on a Mac.
* The amount of settings is very limited, but since this is a beta I'm going to assume that's a temporary issue.
* Search doesn't filter the list anymore. It suggests items them goes to them. Filtering is now an extra step.
* No ability to set keyboard shortcuts.

My overall impression is that yes it works, but it feels totally out of place on a Mac, while all the other 1Password versions I have used for the past 14 years have been some of the best Mac application experiences available. It feels like a typical electron application. It even looks like an electron application. I don't like it at all. I wish you would change your mind and scrap this Electron disaster. I don't think you will, but I hope 1Password 9 will go back to being a great application again.

It's sad to see so many apps switching to web based technologies lately, but to see an application made by developers who really seemed passionate about the Mac experience and to make a great application to contribute and elevate it move to Electron is just heartbreaking.