1Password 6 - Key features missing. Lots of issues.

Hi There

I've been a long time 1Password user on osx and ios, but recently made the switch to a windows machine because of my business needs. With that switch, I've had to sign up for the 1Password Families account and managed to get that up and running on all our connected devices with little problems (although a tedious task).

I find the 1Password6 app on windows to be extremely lacking in features. So much so that I am hesitant to continue using it.

1. The Security Lock. I feel less secure about the program with these missing features:

  • Lock on sleep
  • Lock on screensaver
  • Lock on main window close

I understand the computer being idle makes those superfluous, but it's added security knowing if the computer is somehow not idle, it will still lock. I do a lot of rendering, leaving applications open to process in the background. There are times where my computer does not sleep because it thinks its not idle.

2. Clipboard. I've lost the ability to clear the clipboard after a certain amount of time. I tested the application and even after locking (after idle) it still retains the saved clipboard. That seems like a really big security issue. OSX offers the ability to clear the clipboard after copying a password, but windows does not?

3. Main Application. These are my issues with the main application.

  • No icons! All of my saved logins have no icons, only the 1Password lock icon.

  • Unlocking animation is stuttery and not smooth.

  • Mouse rollover does not highlight the individual fields. With the "copy" button so far off to the right, it's hard to distinguish which field I'm currently on. Implementing the same functionality that osx has (with copy popping up next to the field) or using alternating bg colors would help significantly.

  • This applies to both osx and windows. Why is there a 'copy' button and in the drop-down there is 'copy' as an option again? It would make it more efficient to have 3 buttons next to each other all the time (copy, reveal, large type). Less clicks is better.

  • No way to forward the saved login (mail, message, or print like in osx)

  • No way to star (or favorite) the login! I can't find any way to favorite a login. Can't drag-drop, can't right click, nothing.
  • When unlocked and open, the lock icon at the top right is showing 'locked'. It should be shown unlocked.
  • Lost ability to double click stored login to open webpage
  • LargeType no longer goes away when clicking outside the active window. In osx it goes away unless you drag the LargeType window around (then it becomes it's own window). Even when it becomes it's own window in osx, it will disappear when a new LargeType password is displayed. On windows, it stays up forever which seems like a security risk because it's always on top! Another really minor, but annoying thing, is that the red X to close the LargeType window is not centered.

  • Text in the search bar is not centered properly. Same with the little grey X in the search bar.

  • No way to get to password generator

  • Bug with having "All Items" selected, then highlighting an item, then clicking on "Favorites" but dragging your mouse off before you let go. Favorites will now stay highlighted.

4. 1Password6 Mini (taskbar icon).

  • Lost the ability to click on the icon and have a list of options such as (Favorites, Password Generator, Logins, Notes, Etc).
  • Overall, UI is really ugly and convoluted.
  • Lost the ability to rollover an item and see the item's information. This is a HUGE letdown. Having to right click on a log-in and the only contextual options are "username" & "password". Not being able to roll over a login to see my username or other information is a deal breaker. I can live with the terribly ugly right click options, but at least show me my information!
  • Password generator is now hidden in a right click contextual menu (that has unnecessary whitespace when it pops up)
  • The password generator is extremely ugly from a UI standpoint. Nothing is lined up or centered! The one positive it has going for it is that when you click copy it closes the window (but that really should be a user option). Sometimes I want to generate multiple passwords quickly, except this is now right click small icon, click password generator, have it pop up in the middle of the screen, click copy, repeat. Is it impossible to have the same level of user efficiency that the osx version has? In OSX it's 1 click (left click), highlight Password Generator, click copy, done.

  • Lost the ability to 'FILL' from the password generator

  • When right clicking, there is no way to efficiently click out of the context menu that pops up. If you do click outside of the pop-up, you'll most likely minimize the app or accidentally click and load a log-in. Very ineffective!
  • No way to show large type or reveal passwords!
  • Bug with clicking on an item and moving the mouse off (while still clicked). The item will remain highlighted.

5. 1Password6 Chrome Extension

  • No way to show other login information besides my current active website tab. I can search in the field, but I want to see a list of my information (like in osx).
  • No password generator is a big let down.
  • No ability to see my stored notes without knowing specifically what they're titled (to search for them)

6. More about the password generator.

  • Lost the ability to control the number of digits and symbols! This is another huge deal breaker. OSX has sliders for each field option (length, digits, symbols), but windows only has a slider for length.
  • "Avoid Ambiguous Characters" has become plainly "Ambiguous Characters". Is the option to allow them or to not allow them? On OSX when I check the box it's to avoid them, but in windows if I check the box am I allowing them?
  • When clicking copy, the active window closes, then my last active window becomes the next in focus window (which is correct), but the 1Password6 main app seems to be refreshing as well because my highlighted

7. Searching, copying, and sorting!

  • Lost the ability to search major, minor, all, or other fields.
  • When searching, you can't click in the items list and start typing. This is a really big deal breaker as it interrupts the efficiency of my search.
  • It seems I can hit A to go to the top of the list, then hitting A in succession will go through my list one-by-one. For some reason, G also goes through the list but only after hitting A. This seems like a major bug.
  • When hitting A a small dotted line surrounded my selected item.
  • When using the search bar (because jumping to letters doesn't work) a single character should jump to that position in the list.
  • Sorting! We've lost a lot of options in this one. Here's the list; Website, Frequently Used, Date Last Used, Password Strength, Password Age, Show Duplicated Passwords, Show Websites with Multiple Items, Alphabetically, and lastly Alphabetically Reversed. Again, the UI is really bad and has unnecessary whitespace.

  • The copy button is useless. It's a "Copy To" button, but it does not indicate that. Clicking it and I have no options to actually "copy" it. Meaning, I can't paste it anywhere. I thought maybe it would allow me to copy to favorites, but I still don't see a way to add to that list.

Well, I think that about does it. Really disappointed with the application inside of windows 10. I understand that there are inherently differences because of the os, but overall it seems like I went back to an alpha version of the application instead of the most advanced and newest.

Thanks.


1Password Version: 6.1.308d
Extension Version: 6.1.308d
OS Version: Windows 10
Sync Type: Family Plan

Comments

  • shiftclickme
    shiftclickme
    Community Member

    That's a bummer to hear.

  • D. Martin
    D. Martin
    Community Member

    I use 1Password on MacOS and iOS and love it. I pushed my wife to use 1Password and when I set it up on her Windows 10 machine I was horrified. It's clearly not ready for prime time and I'm embarrassed that I pushed her to use it.

  • MikeT
    edited December 2016

    Hi guys,

    @shiftclickme,

    First, huge thank you for taking the time to write all of that up and we really appreciate it, we know it is something you shouldn't have to do. I'll address each point you've made in the bottom of my post here.

    We're sorry to hear you're disappointed and unfortunately, we do understand. What I can say is it is a young app with a new codebase built in 2016 that is not par yet with the rest of 1Password apps that have many years put into it already. Its UI is not yet optimized nor polished yet. 1Password 4 for Windows is far more mature but its UI is outdated compared to 1Password 6. We're rolling 1Password 6 out in stages as we wanted to have a Windows app available for 1Password.com customers as we can't update 1Password 4 to use that service.

    The Security Lock. I feel less secure about the program with these missing features:

    [Updated: Clarification] These are coming in future updates. We will clarify what Lock when switching session means, which is basically lock when you lock the computer, log out or disconnected from a remote session.

    Clipboard

    The ability to clear the clipboard after a period of time will be added in a future update.

    No icons! All of my saved logins have no icons, only the 1Password lock icon.

    Rich and Custom icons are not implemented, we had this supported in the early builds of 1Password 6 but we had to remove it because it was causing performance issues. We're still optimizing the internal subsystems to be able to handle this properly but we hope to have this available soon.

    Unlocking animation is stuttery and not smooth.

    Did it start to stutter at the end of the animation or as soon as you press enter?

    Mouse rollover does not highlight the individual fields. With the "copy" button so far off to the right..

    Hover row highlighting is on our list to do. We plan to redesign this completely, so that the copy button is also a part of the hover highlighting, not just leave copy button on the right side on all fields, like the way the 1Password.com web app and macOS version does it.

    This applies to both osx and windows. Why is there a 'copy' button and in the drop-down there is 'copy' as an option again?

    Good question, I'll ask and I'll let you know as soon as I have the answer.

    It would make it more efficient to have 3 buttons next to each other all the time (copy, reveal, large type). Less clicks is better.

    We've tried this before in the UI, it doesn't fit well with longer field values, especially when translations are involved. So, rather than have one super-wide list of translated buttons that blocks the field values as well when you're hovering, we've switched to the dropdown instead. However, this isn't a sure thing, we may in fact bring over 2-3 options at once when we redesign for the row highlighting support.

    Sharing, favoriting, drag-drop, right-click, etc.

    All will be implemented in future updates.

    When unlocked and open, the lock icon at the top right is showing 'locked'. It should be shown unlocked.

    It's an action to lock the app, not to show the current status. This is true in all 1Password apps and I'll be sure to bring it up with the design team but they think this is correct.

    Lost ability to double click stored login to open webpage

    This has been implemented internally, it will be available in the next stable update.

    LargeType no longer goes away when clicking outside the active window.

    This is one of the OS platform differences, we haven't been able to make that happen consistently, so for now, you do have to click on 'x'. The same for the off-centered 'x' button, this is a special window type on Windows and it cannot behave the same way it does on macOS nor does it allow us to customize it further.

    Text in the search bar is not centered properly. Same with the little grey X in the search bar.

    I'll bring it up with the design team, we're waiting for them to come up with a design element for this as we're using a character 'x' instead of a design element that can fit the search field better.

    No way to get to password generator

    The Password Generator is available in all password fields. If you want to create a new password quickly, you can right-click on the 1Password icon in the notification area to select Password Generator and copy it, it'll automatically create a new Password item for you.

    Bug with having "All Items" selected, then highlighting an item, then clicking on "Favorites" but dragging your mouse off before you let go. Favorites will now stay highlighted.

    Good catch, without detecting that click release event, it remains highlighted without refreshing the item list. We'll get that fixed.

    Lost the ability to click on the icon and have a list of options such as (Favorites, Password Generator, Logins, Notes, Etc).

    Category groupings with favorites, tags, and Password Generator is coming in the near future. Once this is implemented, the UI will be further polished.

    Lost the ability to rollover an item and see the item's information. This is a HUGE letdown. Having to right click on a log-in and the only contextual options are "username" & "password". Not being able to roll over a login to see my username or other information is a deal breaker. I can live with the terribly ugly right click options, but at least show me my information!

    This was never available before on Windows but we do plan to update 1Password mini to support an in-line item details viewer as well as an item editor like you'd expect to see from macOS version of 1Password.

    Password generator is now hidden in a right click contextual menu (that has unnecessary whitespace when it pops up)

    We've added it recently as we were getting many requests for this but we haven't begun to polish it yet by integrating it with the category view in 1Password mini. This will get better along with the UI issues you've mentioned, filling support and more.

    Bug with clicking on an item and moving the mouse off (while still clicked). The item will remain highlighted.

    Likely the same bug as above, the missing click release causes this weird state.

    Lost the ability to control the number of digits and symbols! This is another huge deal breaker. OSX has sliders for each field option (length, digits, symbols), but windows only has a slider for length.

    We will implement the sliders in a future update.

    "Avoid Ambiguous Characters" has become plainly "Ambiguous Characters". Is the option to allow them or to not allow them?

    Good catch, it used to have it. I'll nudge our developer to see why it was omitted.

    When clicking copy, the active window closes, then my last active window becomes the next in focus window (which is correct), but the 1Password6 main app seems to be refreshing as well because my highlighted

    It saved a new Password item with the password you've copied, which causes the app to sync the data and do a complete database reload. It will refresh less often in future updates as we continue to reduce the need to do a complete database reload.

    Lost the ability to search major, minor, all, or other fields.

    Full text search is not yet implemented.

    When searching, you can't click in the items list and start typing. This is a really big deal breaker as it interrupts the efficiency of my search.

    I believe this is because it was causing accessibility issues when we had this. We'll see if we can restore it without reducing accessibility support for it.

    For some reason, G also goes through the list but only after hitting A. This seems like a major bug.

    Good catch, that's a weird one. It's not supposed to do anything when you type while the item list is focused.

    When using the search bar (because jumping to letters doesn't work) a single character should jump to that position in the list.

    The search doesn't filter by exact title match, it returns anything that matches the search.

    We will add more search options in the future to do that, same for sorting.

    The copy button is useless.

    We're trying to find a good name that would work on all platforms. On macOS/iOS, it is the same as the "Share" option but even that option has lead to confusion as people thought they were sharing it, rather than copying/moving the items to other items.

    Thanks again for your awesome list, we will work on addressing them all.

  • Just an update:

    1. We saw the unlock animation glitches and will fix that soon
    2. The copy button showing up in the drop down menu is not meant to be there, we'll remove that when we redesign the copy button/dropdown menu completely.
  • shiftclickme
    shiftclickme
    Community Member

    Thanks for the responses. Hopefully we'll see updates sooner rather than later since it seems the mac version is very polished and I'm already eyeing alternatives now for the PC. Bummed I paid for a year of 1Password without knowing how bad it was first. I'm not a programmer, but I'm not sure why it's such a problem to develop the windows application features alongside osx.

    I do have one follow up question:

    It saved a new Password item with the password you've copied, which causes the app to sync the data and do a complete database reload. It will refresh less often in future updates as we continue to reduce the need to do a complete database reload.

    So whenever a password is generated and copied it creates a new entry? This seems really odd to me - it should only be generating and copying to the clipboard (or filling an active field). The only time it should create an entry would be when I choose to save one. I don't need a ton of empty 'password' entries.

  • MikeT
    edited December 2016

    Hi @shiftclickme,

    So whenever a password is generated and copied it creates a new entry? This seems really odd to me

    We're doing this to record every passwords you've used, so that you don't reuse it later for a different site or app, which is a big security issue. In addition, it serves as a safety net, so that if you paste or fill the password in to update the password for the site but 1Password didn't update the Login item, you can fall back to this password item instead of being locked out without having access to the latest password.

    When implemented in its entirety, 1Password will remove redundant password items when you auto-save a Login item that matches the same password + URL combination of the password item and this will be offered as an advanced option as well if you want to start cleaning up the database.

    but I'm not sure why it's such a problem to develop the windows application features alongside osx.

    We have a separate team building native code for each platform, there is nothing reused or shared between all platforms with the exception of the unified macOS/iOS codebase. Trying to align feature parity across all platforms is difficult when each app is built in a different language, development environment, and different team of different size building the app. However, we are trying to align feature parity across all platforms at the same time, it's just that we need the Windows codebase to be more complete before we can do that.

    You're seeing a polished macOS app because it's a mature codebase that started from the original release of 1Password 4 for Mac in 2013 and we have a much larger flagship team there as AgileBits was originally a Mac company. 1Password 1-4 for Windows was matching up to 1Password 4 for Mac at the time. However and unfortunately, there were some internal Windows projects going on at the time that slowed down development to focus on the next generation of Windows client, so some folks have seen an extended lull in updates but at no cost to security, we were shipping security updates at the same time as the macOS version. For an example, the recent browser authorization support was available in 1Password 6 for Windows first, then macOS and then 1Password 4 for Windows, all shipped at the relatively same time.

    Unfortunately, these internal next-gen projects didn't work out for us and now, we're doing a different project with 1Password 6, which is a young codebase started early in the Spring of this year. We still have a smaller team on Windows that we're been trying to ramp up for a while.

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