Vault Selection UI Improvement [Under consideration]

jfelchner
jfelchner
Community Member
edited December 2014 in iOS

I use multiple vaults constantly. Having the vaults buried under two menus is annoying. As is the fact that when you tap on a vault, it doesn't automatically take you back out to the main screen.

When are we going to get an icon in the upper left of the main screen that lets us switch vaults?

Comments

  • rctneil
    rctneil
    Community Member

    I'd like to add my vote to this too as I also use multiple vaults.

  • Hi guys,

    When are we going to get an icon in the upper left of the main screen that lets us switch vaults?

    We haven't decided on anything, so there's no confirmation there would be an icon. It could be done differently such as swiping between vaults on the main view, adding an extra button on the toolbar to select a vault, or other methods we haven't looked into yet.

    All we can share right now is that we do plan to simplify and improve the vault switching experience. Right now, we're focused on the core item experience, editing/creating, and we'll continue outward from there.

  • Cyrille
    Cyrille
    Community Member

    Good to know this. I think the same than previous user. I have to switch really often between my different vaults and actually it's not really user friendly as requiring several taps to do it. What I would like to in a next version is also to be able to copy and/or move items from one vault to another ones in the iOS app. Actually it's only possible on the Mac app.

  • Hi @Cyrille,

    I've added your vote to our tracker on this, thanks!

  • jfelchner
    jfelchner
    Community Member

    Are there any plans to remove the in-app browser once iOS 8 adoption gets to a certain percentage?

    I'd love to see that spot used for something like vault selection rather than something that can be done in Safari now.

  • Hi @jfelchner,

    Are there any plans to remove the in-app browser once iOS 8 adoption gets to a certain percentage?

    No, we will keep 1Browser and do plan to improve it a lot. There are a lot of things we can't do with the extension that we could do in the 1Browser because it is under our controls.

    I'd love to see that spot used for something like vault selection rather than something that can be done in Safari now.

    Maybe do a selector for the last few buttons, so you can select which button it should be.

  • jfelchner
    jfelchner
    Community Member

    @MikeT YESS!! Like Tweetbot does! That'd be perfect!!

  • cjbulow
    cjbulow
    Community Member

    Seconded the enthusiasm shown by @jfelchner for the Tweetbot type selector @miket

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @cjbulow,

    Thanks so much for adding your enthusiastic vote here! I'll pass it along. :)

  • eh801
    eh801
    Community Member

    I would like to vote for the possibility to remove the in-app browser since I never use it. I'd rather see a change vaults button.

  • jfelchner
    jfelchner
    Community Member

    I'm curious if someone could elaborate on advantages of the in-app browser vs Safari. I understand I'm not your only use case and I also know how smart you all are, so I'm sure there are good reasons, I'm just curious what they are.

    The advantages you get by being able to fill in directly in Safari however are numerous. Most notably the fact that nothing other than Safari can use Nitrous (even web views AFAIK) and that you gain tabs, searching, app switching, private browsing mode, etc, etc, etc.

  • MikeT
    edited January 2015

    Hi @jfelchner,

    Most notably the fact that nothing other than Safari can use Nitrous (even web views AFAIK) and that you gain tabs, searching, app switching, private browsing mode, etc, etc, etc.

    That is not true anymore with iOS 8 and the new WKWebView APIs. The new API will use the same engine and is not limited in any way. You can find out more here: http://nshipster.com/wkwebkit/ and Apple's docs here: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/WebKit/Reference/WKWebView_Ref/index.html

    We have tabs in 1Browser, search, and it's already private due to the fact that you cannot view anything without unlocking 1Password first.

    I'm curious if someone could elaborate on advantages of the in-app browser vs Safari.

    Even with the extensions API in iOS 8, there's not much more we can do with the extension. With in-app browser, we can deeply integrate with the site's source code and do more but we haven't had the chance yet as we wanted to do the iOS extension first.

    One of the most common reasons we had before the iOS extension was that parents wanted to have a browser that's blocked with a password, something that Safari doesn't have.

    However, one problem with the in-app browser is that we haven't figured out how to do age-restriction filters for kids using our 1Password app. This is why 1Password is restricted to adults at the App Store.

  • jfelchner
    jfelchner
    Community Member

    @MikeT thanks for teaching me something new!! I didn't know that WebView now has full access to Nitrous. That's really great news.

    I personally think it'd be better to have "1Password Browser" as a completely separate app than something that must be added and loaded with 1PW. I don't know anything about iOS development, but as an app that I open literally dozens of times per day, the load time (time prior to the TouchID prompt popping up) for 1PW could definitely be faster (I'm on an iPhone 6+) and any small improvement (not having to load the browser code) would help.

    Additionally, as a separate app, wouldn't you be able to integrate with iOS' built-in parental filters and guided access which you may want to behave differently for the browser vs the main 1PW app.

    Maybe a "Did you know this was available?" when the user first installs the main app?

    This topic is getting a little off-topic now, so I won't pursue this after you respond. Just throwing an idea out there. As a personal view/opinion, I'd prefer the iOS team spend their limited time and resources on things the majority of people will use rather than reimplementing a browser for a small subset of functionality.

  • MikeT
    edited January 2015

    Hi @jfelchner,

    I personally think it'd be better to have "1Password Browser" as a completely separate app than something that must be added and loaded with 1PW.

    Well, the question is how do we share data quickly as possible between both apps? This is actually very difficult because of how locked down iOS is. IIRC, iOS has recently expanded to allow apps to share data as long as apps are built by the same company. Given it is a recent change, it's going to be a new experience for us.

    In addition, I'd suspect It would actually make the app slower because now, in addition to syncing to your other devices via Internet or local Wi-Fi network, it now has to sync your changes between both apps locally on the same device.

    The 1Password extension for Safari and other apps are not loading or syncing your entire database, the extension sends the URL to 1Password in a secure method and 1Password sends back the requested data. That's why it is quick.

    If it is just a third party browser with the 1Password extension, it wouldn't be better than any other third party apps that does support the app extension and provides password or PIN protection.

    I don't know anything about iOS development, but as an app that I open literally dozens of times per day, the load time (time prior to the TouchID prompt popping up) for 1PW could definitely be faster (I'm on an iPhone 6+) and any small improvement (not having to load the browser code) would help.

    1Browser really doesn't do anything to the startup time, it's not initialized until you actually open 1Browser first.

    The loading process hasn't been really optimized for performance and it is something we plan to do in the future as we continue to focus on higher-priority issues such as the sync process. We're not there just yet but once we finally get it working the way we want it, we can then work on improving the performance. There's no reason to improve performance if the feature doesn't work reliably for everybody.

    The problem is probably because we're actually doing a lot of things at the same time; loading your db, decrypt, sync, layout the interface and so on at the same time. All of that is very I/O intensive, something mobile devices aren't fast at the moment.

    In addition, we have to maintain compatibility with all iOS 8 devices, which means iPhone 4S with single core A5. We have to make sure we don't make 1Password slower on iPhone 4S by optimizing for the faster hardware.

    Additionally, as a separate app, wouldn't you be able to integrate with iOS' built-in parental filters and guided access which you may want to behave differently for the browser vs the main 1PW app.

    Well, if we figured out that part, it would be in 1Password anyway. Separate app doesn't make it easier for us to add parental filters, it would be the same difficulty.

This discussion has been closed.