Sync file rename & conflicts

Ruckle

I apologize in advance if this has been discussed elsewhere. I searched the threads and did not see anything but it was a quick run through.

Anyways, my question/issue is regarding renaming the save file (agile keychain) created when syncing between devices. Briefly, between my wife and I we have two macbooks and two iphones. Upgraded to 1password 4 when it was released and got the iOS apps soon after. I have a main (primary) vault for all of my passwords and then I created another vault that is "shared" between my wife and I so I can just pass along account info between my main vault and the shared vault. I have both vaults synced via dropbox with my iphone and the shared vault synced with her iphone. Overall I have had a good experience with the sync feature and not many issues as some others have discussed here.

However...since I have two vaults that I am syncing, each has its own associated save file/keychain. They are in different folders within my dropbox but I like to rename the file from "1password.agilekeychain" to something to distinguish between the two. So my issue arises when I disable sync, rename the file, and then go to renable sync, it searches dropbox but can not find ANY 1password save file. If I change it back to "1password.agilekeychain" it is able to find it with out any problem. Seems odd that it would require a specific filename rather than just being able to locate a specific file type. To confuse the issue, If I just rename the file WITHOUT disabling sync first, it works just fine and continues to sync without any hiccups. I even go into preferences>sync and it shows the updated filename with which it is syncing. This seems to contradict the "need" for a specific filename as it is able to use the new name since it is the correct file type.

Ok so just rename without disabling sync first...problem solved right? Well that is true on my macbook where I just did that but now the 1pwd sync on my iphone can not locate the renamed file for the same reason mentioned above. After messing around with it for a bit, I found that by adding a second vault on my phone, after the "primary" is set up (and left blank), the sync process will search and find ANY available keychain file with any name. So basically I have to create a dummy primary vault on my phone in order to be able to sync to the renamed file. Seems like an unnecessary step but hey it works.

Last thing I'll mention here is the issue that others have mentioned regarding conflict resolution with syncing. If I set my devices up as I just described, everything works without issue however, in the process of figuring all that out, I had updated/added some account info on my computer. Once I finally re-synced with my phone there were a ton of conflict entries in various logins. If this sync feature is not able to determine which information set is new/updated and which is old upon syncing or merging then it fails to do what I would actually consider to be "syncing".

The renaming issue is not a huge deal. It would be nice if 1pwd was not so stringent on the filename or atleast gave you the opportunity to name the file whatever you want considering it is indeed able to recognize the file type regardless of the name. The conflict resolution issue is not great and from what I have read, people have had more problems than even I have with it. Hopefully Agilebits continues to work to improve this great feature.

Megan

Hi @Ruckle‌

Thanks for taking the time to write such detailed feedback here. At this time, 1Password 4 for iOS is looking specifically for a 1Password.agilekeychain on initial set-up. If you rename your primary vault, the iOS will not find it when you open 1Password for the first time. As you have noticed, you will have to create a blank vault and then import your custom-named primary in as a secondary vault. We've heard from a lot of users who would like the ability to rename their primary vault, so we are looking into ways to make this possible, but for now, I'm afraid you're stuck with that standard default file name.

I'm sorry to hear that your experiments have left you with some conflicted data. Unfortunately there was a bug in an earlier version of 1Password 4 where conflicts were resolved incorrectly. This has been fixed in the most recent versions, however, it does mean that the conflict entries will have to be manually updated. To make this easier, you can create a Smart Folder on the Mac using the criteria Conflict fields are present to easily see which items might need to be cleaned up.

I hope this helps, but we're here if you have any further questions!