change font type

zomgreg
zomgreg
Community Member

I don't see a way to override the font settings. I would like to be able to view passwords in a monospace font. Changing the font will help in situations where it's not possible to paste the password and I have to type. In those situations I need to be able to differentiate between 1, l, and so on. Is this an OS X setting I should change or should I expect this in 1Password?

Comments

  • Hi @zomgreg‌

    1Password does not offer font customizability, but the passwords are already displayed in a monospace font with clear distinction between O and 0, 1 and l, etc. Also numbers are displayed in a different color (blue) from alphas (black).

    Thanks!

  • rslueb
    rslueb
    Community Member

    I think different colors for different types of characters is a great idea. However, blue does not work so well on the browser plugin popups which have a grey background. Blue on Gray is very difficult to read. Any chance of using a different color?

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @rslueb,

    What did you have in mind? Certainly I don't believe anybody would want to use a combination of colours that may make it harder for anybody with any sort of vision impairment and it might just be about making sure we're aware of how different combinations are tougher than others for some. Here is where your opinion can help though as when I look at a password in either 1Password or 1Password mini I don't have any problems reading it meaning I may not be positioned well to understand.

  • jtucker
    jtucker
    Community Member
    edited April 2015

    @bwoodruff,

    I disagree that there's a "clear distinction" between O and 0 in the 1Password UI. You personally might be able to tell which the third characters is in the image below (assuming it doesn't get zoomed in the post), but I cannot. If I zoom in, the colors are more obvious but they are not at all clearly distinct on my i1-calibrated Retina display at the higher scaled resolution I normally use. It needs to be a font where the shape is obviously different or else use colors that are significantly different -- the pale blue versus the pale black are not. Why not just use red for numbers as well as symbols or else a darker blue?

    That it's no problem for some is no consolation for those for whom it is. Note that the problem is in the display/edit screen -- the Password Generator screen uses a zero with a slash through it (like much of the rest of the world) so that it's obvious there. It would be really appropriate if the password fields elsewhere in 1Password used that font.

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @jtucker,

    We do have certain UI improvement requests at the moment regarding contrast or font size but I am a little puzzled by your post regarding O and 0.

    To better help explain my confusion here is a small screenshot from 1Password

    As you can see, the password field and the custom password are both using the same font and colouring scheme and while you lose the colouring effect when editing a password, the actual font doesn't change and the slash is present in all if the character is the numerical zero compared to an uppercase o.

    It might be you didn't realise we were already doing this or I'm misunderstanding where you're seeing this. We'll await your response and take it from there :smile:

  • jtucker
    jtucker
    Community Member

    Yikes! I stand corrected. I would have sworn I checked variations of the characters in the field before posting.. This was the network password field of a Wireless Router entry and I'd spent quite a few minutes trying to set up an older Mac (running 10.6) to use my network with an extremely long WPA2 key. It wasn't on the network and thus no 1Password or ScreenSharing copy/paste available. And I would swear I tried using both the O and 0, including typing both into the field in 1Password to see if there was a difference. And at one point I type it into TextEdit so I could see, edit, and paste the password.

    In any case, I was wrong about the clarity, so thanks for straightening me out. Now if I can just remember next time I have to manually type a password that the zero has the slash. :p

  • littlebobbytables
    littlebobbytables
    1Password Alumni

    :smile: I'm glad we could help clear that up a bit @jtucker. As I say, we've got a couple of ongoing requests as when you compare an iOS device to the Mac one does a much better job of making the password legible. A combination of that and knowing we use a font that helps distinguish those particular combinations will hopefully help most of the users struggling at the moment.

    I actually wonder why any font makes it hard to separate those combinations out as so many do a terrible job. The font Safari renders our own forums with is a prime example where Il is Il but at best one might be marginally thicker than the other?

    Oh and yeah, nothing worse than typing a long WPA2 key out by hand. I've had to do that before. The typos I kept making! :tongue:

  • rslueb
    rslueb
    Community Member

    @littlebobbytables

    Regarding my comment about using an alternate color for numbers in the mini browser and Safari popups, I believe the current configuration is:

    Background: Gray
    Alphas: White
    Special Characters: Red
    Numbers: Blue

    The problem is that the contrast between the blue numbers and gray background is so poor that I often can't read the numbers without getting close to the screen. The problem can exacerbated by the window color on top of with the popup is overlaid.

    I'm not certain what color I would recommend in place of blue -- maybe green?

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @rslueb,

    What version of 1Password are you currently using? In the latest version of 1Password 5, the alphabetic characters are dark grey.

    I certainly won't argue that the grey and the blue are not very distinguishable - certainly not as visible as the special characters in red. You might be right that a green might pop out a little bit more. We have an open request in our internal tracker to improve the display, and I've added a 'vote' for you there.

    ref: OPM-1459

  • rslueb
    rslueb
    Community Member

    @Megan

    I am using 1Password 5. Part of my difficulty may be because I use the Dark menu bar and dock option; even the red is problematic. Since this is really only an issue when I need to manually copy the password, the Large Type option that is available on iOS may be the best solution. I see that this has been requested by several other people as well - please add a "yes" for me too.

    Thank

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    Thanks for your feedback and for the screenshot, @rslueb! I also use the dark menu bar and Dock, and to me, the password character colors stand out much better that way (even the blue with the dark gray background). But, people see colors differently (as I learned from the "blue or white dress" debate earlier this year), so I suspect it's difficult to choose a set of colors that will work well for everyone.

    But our developers will try to come up with something better, and Megan has definitely sent them your feedback. Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts on that, hopefully we'll be able to make improvements to the colors in a future version! :)

  • danco
    danco
    Volunteer Moderator

    My own colour vision is reasonably good. But it occurs to me that, if you are looking at colour choices again, you ought to take into account people with some form of colour blindness.

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    Excellent point - thanks @danco! :)

This discussion has been closed.