iCloud Sync - only one vault?

BasilFawlty
BasilFawlty
Community Member
edited January 2018 in Mac

Am I correct in my recollection that iCloud Sync will only allow me to have one vault, whereas Dropbox sync will allow multiple vaults? If true, are there any plans to implement multiple vault capability with iCloud sync or is there some technical limitation that prevents it?


1Password Version: 6.8.6
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: 10.13.2
Sync Type: Dropbox

Comments

  • @BasilFawlty,

    iCloud Sync only supports the primary vault, there are no plans to make changes to iCloud sync at this time.

    Rudy

  • BasilFawlty
    BasilFawlty
    Community Member

    Well darn. I'd really like to use iCloud in lieu of Dropbox, but also really like having ability to separate data into specific vaults. Hope, barring some technical reason that prohibits it, you might consider this feature in the future.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni
    edited February 2018

    @BasilFawlty - around here, one of the unofficial mottos is "never say never" (unless of course something's simply not possible, in which case we try to break the news gently). However, in this specific case, although it's possible we might commit some resources down the road to doing the work necessary to expand iCloud sync to secondary vaults, I feel constrained to mention that one of the reasons we built the 1password.com backend was so we could get away from the limitations of third-party sync APIs instead of continuing to work to shore them up.

    To be clear, we have nothing but love for Dropbox and Apple -- but their sync services are designed to handle all sorts of data, instead of being specifically designed to work hand-in-glove with our native 1Password apps to sync ONLY your 1Password data. At some point, we just realized how much more we could offer our users with a first-party solution like 1password.com -- things that would be either difficult or impossible with any of our third-party sync solutions.

    We will absolutely continue to offer both iCloud and Dropbox for the foreseeable future because some of particularly our longer-standing users prefer to use those more-advanced, manual sync methods, but although I'll repeat "never say never," we can do much more for our users, much more quickly and easily, with 1password.com, so I suspect that's where the bulk of our focus will remain for the near-term.

  • philkim
    philkim
    Community Member
    edited March 2018

    @Lars,

    Thanks for the explanation. While 1Password.com seems like a nice enough service, one of the reasons why I chose 1Password over competitors like Dashlane is that I prefer to store my data outside vendor's server, such as iCloud and Dropbox. Nothing personal, but I am more comfortable with iCloud and Dropbox's security and availability.

    Now that iCloud offers file sharing, I see little reason to use Dropbox, which sucks up significant amount of CPU and RAM on my Mac, as well as known to be a bit naughty. When and if Apple adds shared folder, I intend to uninstall Dropbox for good.

    I hope Agilebits will further improve 1Password client by offering multiple vaults in iCloud as well as much needed catchup to Dashlane.

    And please charge us (non 1Password.com subscribers) for the upgrade. I feel bad for getting free upgrades for several years in a row. Maybe half the price of 1Password.com subscription?

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @philkim

    I am more comfortable with iCloud and Dropbox's security and availability.

    I have to confess, that's a bit of a new one on me: usually, if people have any objection to 1password.com accounts, it's because they're anti-"cloud." We don't often hear from people who are pro-cloud (or at least cloud-agnostic), but who would prefer to manually maintain an advanced, 3rd-party sync API that (in your words) "sucks up significant amount of CPU and RAM on my Mac, as well as known to be a bit naughty" over a dedicated, first-party sync solution built from the ground up to work specifically with your data and the native 1Password apps you already use and trust. But, to each his/her own; we will continue to offer these 3rd party sync solutions.

    I hope Agilebits will further improve 1Password client by offering multiple vaults in iCloud...

    The combined shifting of both the security landscape and what is (or becomes) possible to do code-wise means, as I said previously, that we rarely say "never," but I'll be as transparent as I can: at this point, aside from the upcoming 1Password 7, our development resources are mostly going toward improving our own, first-party sync solution rather than shoring up or expanding upon older, advanced, third-party solutions.

    Regarding charges, the upcoming 1Password 7 will indeed be a paid upgrade for everyone (except those who purchased 1Password 6 at full price very recently). You're right, everyone else has had a pretty good ride in recent years, with both version 6 and version 5 on Mac being free full-version upgrades. There's a few historical reasons why that happened, but although multiple details about 1Password 7 are still in flux (specific release date, final feature list, etc), that one is not: 1Password 7 will be a paid upgrade for (nearly) everyone.

  • Jo_ann77
    Jo_ann77
    Community Member

    I also have just one vault, but I don't understand the working of syncing with iCloud.
    I have searched the forum, can;'t find a simple explanation if iCloud syncing is safe (yes I've read it is and I believe you) as for me keeping things on my Mac feels like safer than sharing all my info somewhere in the cloud, but that idea is based on the fact that I don't understand it.
    The coin isn't falling to the right site so to speak
    Is there a article that explains this in a simple way.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Jo_ann77

    Is there a article that explains this in a simple way.

    There is indeed! This article explains How 1Password protects your data when you use a sync service. Long story short, we don't depend upon the security of the connection or of the service itself; all your 1Password data is already encrypted before it ever leaves your computer, so that none of your secrets are transmitted in "plain text." Even if an attacker were able to breach iCloud or Dropbox, all they would get is a mass of unreadable ciphertext that is useless without your Master Password to decrypt it.

  • Jo_ann77
    Jo_ann77
    Community Member

    @lars,
    Brilliant thank you so much :)

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Jo_ann77 - you're quite welcome; glad that was helpful. :)

  • philkim
    philkim
    Community Member
    edited May 2019

    @Lars,

    I am sure 1Password.com is very nice. I tried it when 1Password 7 for Mac was released last year and it certainly was a lot easier to use than adding multiple vaults from Dropbox one by one. And being able to manage other users can be very valuable. Your motivation to push 1Password.com over Dropbox isn't purely driven by finance. 1Password.com offers superior user experience.

    However...

    What I love the most about 1Password (the app) over competitors is platform agnostic nature. If a customer feels more comfortable storing data somewhere else, 1Password was the obvious choice.

    My criticism is directed only to Dropbox. Dropbox is expensive (twice as much as Google One and iCloud) and more resource intensive than iCloud.

    I am sure adding multiple vaults to iCloud isn't as trivial as adding a file selector to 1Password iOS app (although it seems much more trivial in macOS). And iCloud support means disrupting cross platform compatibility with Android and Windows.

    But empowering customers has been 1Password's strength and I am sad that Agilebits feels the focus should be furthering 1Password.com.

    If Agilebits offer a cheaper subscription tier for storing data on the iCloud, I would be all over it.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @philkim - your points are well-taken: if you're an all-Apple-device user, then why wouldn't you want an iCloud-based solution? The reason things are as they are now has to do mostly with the history of how they evolved.

    Dropbox was our first "cloud" sync option, because back in the early days when we were considering something of this nature, iCloud wasn't even really a thing at the time. It was MobileMe (remember that?) and it just wasn't very robust, for our purposes. We added support for a single iCloud-synced vault, but by 2014 when 1Password 4 for Mac was released and include multiple vault support in the app (1Password 3 for Mac had only a single vault capability), we were already seeing the limits of what could be done with the by-definition limited and generic 3rd party sync APIs available to us from Dropbox and iCloud (not to mention all the others we got - and continue to get - requests for, such as GDrive, OneDrive and many others).

    It's not Apple's or Dropbox's fault; they have to make their sync engines multi-faceted and competent across a wide range of file types their users might want to sync. But we realized that while any 3rd party sync solution such as those was never going to be designed exclusively for your 1Password data, if we built our own from the ground up and hosted it ourselves, we could build the sync solution of our (and our users') dreams: something powerful, flexible, dedicated only to your 1Password data instead of your photos, spreadsheets, other generic databases, etc. That's when the idea of 1password.com really began to take root in earnest and receive development attention. And from then on, that's where our focus has been.

    Don't get me wrong: we love Dropbox and obviously Apple; they provided us sync options we could have achieved no other way (at least not immediately), in the beginning, and we continue to work with their offerings to this day. But now that 1password.com exists, it's where our focus will remain. I'm not quite sure what you meant in your post by "empowering customers," but if you meant it in the way I think of it, then I agree with you: 1Password's strength has been empowering users by giving them the best password manager we can. But this doesn't mean giving users a tool with the most options/features possible, because everything we choose to work on here means something else that doesn't get worked on, or gets back-burnered for a while. So we made the decision a long time ago to use our best judgment in concert with user feedback to make the best decisions we could about where to spend limited resources and developer time, rather than to try to say "yes" to as many requests as we could. Over the years, this has meant learning to instead say "no" to things we felt either weren't going to benefit enough users to warrant the outlay of resources required to create them, or might not be the best path forward because better solutions/ideas were available. We had to scrap USB sync and WebDAV for those reasons, if you recall. And we chose to say no to spending our developers' time pursuing as many sync options as we could, in favor of creating the best one we were capable of. You can see the results of our efforts in 1password.com memberships. We think it's been the right choice. But if you're looking for iCloud sync, standalone licenses are still available for 1Password 7 for Mac, and can be purchased right from within the app itself.

    Thanks for being a 1Password user, as well as for taking the time to share your ideas and use-case. Let us know if you have any follow-up questions or comments.

  • Hi @sndbbbl

    There are very few things I can ever remember us saying no to (I've been here... 11+ years). WebDAV is the one that stands out. We built the feature, it didn't work well, we did everything in our power to make it work, and it was still unacceptable. So it was scrapped and a big 'nope' stamp was placed on the file. While very little around here is written in stone, I'm fairly confident that stamp is.

    Ben

  • Thanks for understanding, @sndbbbl.

    Ben

This discussion has been closed.