If custom Categories were available, how would *you* use them?
1Password does not currently allow you to create your own Categories, but I believe AgileBits have hinted (without promising anything) that this is something they're considering. This would mean that if none of the existing Categories (like Login, Bank Account, Email Address etc) fit your needs, then you'd be able to create your own, with your own chosen set of default fields.
What you can do in 1Password 4 today is customize most of the fields within any Item (add, remove, rename them etc), and flip the "type" of a field between text and password. You can also Duplicate an entire Item (whether its fields are customized or not), to create new items with the same set of fields.
But you cannot change an item's Category, or create new Categories of your own. If an item was created as a Login, it will always be a Login. This affects how it's displayed, and how you navigate to it. Each Category type has a fixed icon that cannot be changed (except Logins, whose icons are derived from the web site referenced in the URL, if there is a one — and if the web site provides an icon. Non-Logins don't seem to have this ability, even if you add a web site field, which might be appropriate for, say, Software Licenses or Bank Accounts).
I have several different types of items that I currently create under the Login Category, and I distinguish them from real web site logins with naming conventions such as "^..." and "_...". This means they are partitioned at least alphabetically from my genuine web site logins.
However, when I navigate to these items under "Categories", I must do so as if they were web site logins, which they are not. Furthermore, some of the default fields they inherit from the Login Category may not be relevant: for example, one or more of username, password and web site may be superfluous. While I can delete "web site", I cannot delete "username" and keep "password". Similarly I can't delete "password" and keep "web site", etc. Regardless, the item remains a Login.
In contrast, a custom Category would contain just the fields that are relevant for a given type of item, and all its items would be stored and navigable in a dedicated section of the app, under "Categories".
So... if custom Categories were available, how would you use them? Is this a feature you'd like to see?
Below are my suggestions. I hope I don't get into trouble for bringing this subject up again, but I did mention some of these suggestions earlier in the 1Password 4 for Mac Beta forum, and I thought it was worth bringing the discussion over here as well. Anyway, here they are:
Devices. For devices and appliances for which I need to store information, including lock screen PINs for phones or tablets, passwords for backup devices, computer details including account credentials, disk encryption master passwords and recovery keys, security credentials for network appliances, and so on. These items often have a password-type credential of some type, but typically no username and no website URL. Sometimes there will be a private admin site URL, but even then, I want to keep these items entirely separate from my public web site logins.
Services. For services that are typically accessed over the internet but not via a web site (or not primarily via a web site). For example: backup services, cloud services, broadband/ADSL connection details, etc. This Category would basically be like a Login, i.e. there is a username and password, but there may not be a web site URL. I know you can create a Login item and delete the web site field, but I want to store these as a different Category.
Apps. For apps which have a credential which is local to the device they're installed on, such as local pass codes or unlock codes, and perhaps also for "in-app registrations" where you set up credentials within an app but there's no corresponding web site you can log in to (although this perhaps overlaps with Services). Apps would have password field, but typically no username. There may be a web site, but not one you can log in to with the credential.
Organisations. For organisations that I'm registered with, and who have my private data that I want to track in 1Password, but who don't have any sort of login facility that I can use on their web site. This would include my employer and various other companies as well. These items typically do have a web site, but no username or password.
Data. For protected files or data, such as encrypted Office documents, master passwords for 1Password secondary vaults, cryptocurrency wallets, etc. Like Devices, these items often have a password of some kind, but no username or website URL.
Finally, it would be nice if for any Category, including Logins, you could rename the built-in username and password fields to match the terminology used by a given web site, device, service etc. For example, on many (most?) web sites your username is not only called, but actually is your "email address". And on various item types, the password is called something else such as "passcode", "security ID", "pass phrase", etc — especially on banking web sites, devices and encrypted data. In 1Password's Login Category, these fields can only be called "username" and "password". It would be nice if you could change the labels of these fields to match the terminology used on the web site, device, appliance etc.
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There is at least one competing application that would allow you to do what you describe and more, to your heart's content. I moved to 1Password from that application, which I modified liberally year after year, adding my own set of categories and even within the default categories, changing field types at will. Categories came to not even have a uniform set of fields within them. That made for a big migration headache when I wanted to change applications. So although I have absolutely no objection to anything you wish for, I do suggest careful thought about what you do, in case you ever want to migrate elsewhere. I wrote more about this in another forum post, which you might be interested in, here.
I will likely use custom categories in 1Password myself when they arrive, but I will be much more circumspect and systematic about how I do so than I was before. In particular, if I create categories, all records will always have the same uniform set of fields within them. And I'm not even confident that this will make moving away from 1Password easy if I ever do decide to shift again.
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Thanks @hawkmoth. You said in the other thread "In particular, I would not create a bunch of custom fields that varied among records in a single category."
But I already do that in spades! For example, many of my Logins often have custom field section called "Security Details", containing lots custom fields such as "alternate email", "alternate phone", "recovery key", and so on. I also have Logins with a custom field section called "Security Questions" in which the field names are things like "What was the name of your first dog", and the field values are the answers. I also liberally create all kinds of other custom fields.
I hadn't even thought about how I would migrate this data to another app, if I had to. But if creating custom fields is a bad idea, then that horse bolted long ago, for me at least — and specifically, it bolted right at the point when I joined the 1P4 for Mac beta :-D
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@semblance, I understand. But for me, I will consider this all very carefully before I let the horse out of the barn again. My database is small compared to others that have been described in the forums here.. Even so, it was a big chore to reenter everything by hand. Which is what I did when the importer didn't work in a usable fashion. For me.
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@semblance, why not ask for a few more predefined categories? If they covered 98% of what the world misses it would keep everything simple. And that is what we all like!
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Hi @mahmon — well, mainly because I suspect that everyone's needs might be slightly different.
Would more fixed Categories cover 98% of what the world misses? I don't know; that's partly why i asked "how would you use custom Categories?" Would other users use them the same way as me? If so, more fixed Categories might be fine.
I am not sure what the complexity burden would be of allowing users to create their own categories — it may not be as much as you think.
Also, I asked once before for additional fixed categories, and AgileBits responded that they were thinking about the possibility creating custom Categories instead. I hadn't even thought about it until then :-)
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My recollection is that AgileBits has said that custom categories are coming for sure. But I can't find the post that says so.
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There is an indication in post #6 in this thread that custom categories are on the radar—and with a couple of interesting linked discussion threads, too.
Stephen
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I've been looking for this, also. I have sent them an email but never heard back from them about this exact topic. I used to use SafeWallet AND 1Password. I used 1P for just logins and SafeWallet for storing all my other information (Credit Cards, Bank Accounts, SS#'s, etc). As 1P got more robust over time, I went with it exclusively.
It's still missing some categories that I would like to see, such as:
- Insurance Information (Health, Dental, Vision)
- Automobile Cards (VIN, Plate, Registration, etc)
- Auto Insurance
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
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I use Secure Notes as a catch-all when an item doesn't fit a pre-defined category. This happens a lot with international documents, like my Spanish NIE and my Dutch BSN, verblijfskaart, and DigiD. While some of these documents could be wedged into existing categories (NIE and BSN into Social Security Numbers, and verblijfskaart into Driver Licenses), they don't match very well. It also wouldn't make much sense to see my NIE next to my SSN under Social Security Numbers, for example (especially since Spain issues an entirely separate number that better fits the description). In general, I sometimes find the categories and the default labels of a new category item to be painfully US-centric, which I acknowledge is probably a reflection of the intended primary market. (It does make me qualify recommendations of 1Password to my international colleagues, though.)
My desire for custom categories is mostly a reflection of the way in which my use of 1Password has evolved from storing web passwords to curating a repository of digital keys, sensitive or otherwise, including copier codes, employee numbers, financial/insurance policy details, and even a hi-res color scan of my passport. Maybe none of these were even on the radar when it was still called 1Passwd. The application still has a heavy stress on website logins (not complaining, my life would be much more difficult without), but my usage patterns are outgrowing this focus.
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I know that 1Password was first intended as a password manager but it has slowly expanded beyond that. Licenses, Memberships, SSNs, Insurance and Secure Notes don't actually have anything to do passwords.
The product has moved onto securely storing a number of different data types for quick and easy retrieval and I'd like them to fully embrace this. With Apple's new KeyChain, it's all that more important that AgileBits include features that entice a number of different use cases.
With custom categories I'd start to use 1Password as
a home inventory system, not only keeping track of things I have, their serial numbers, warranty dates and pertinent information but also where exactly (Room>Area>Box) they are within the house.
a family database for all sorts of miscellaneous information. I know what days which garbage cans are picked up. I know how to program the Hue lighting system, and the Nest thermostat. I know the name of the postman and the local gardener. No one else in the family does.
We already use Paperless for shared grocery and other lists, 1Password for, well, passwords and are now looking to add a third (and most likely too complicated to use) app for the use cases I just described.
The family knows 1Password and are already used to using it to retrieve certains types of info and I'd like to start keeping track of more data without the cumbersome user interface that most other database apps have.
Edit: As an aside, I'd like to have a Setting to be able to make every Search one which searches all fields, instead of having to make that choice after entering a search query.
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Thanks for some great suggestions.
Looking through the replies here (and in the linked threads), there are several that come up frequently:
- Vehicles. Fields could include VIN, license #, Radio anti-theft code, paint colour, etc (suggested by @Sunny_Farms, @DS625 and @dberezin)
- Insurance policies. Fields could include company, policy #, agent, etc (suggested by @DS625 and @dberezin)
- Hardware items. For serial numbers, warranty dates, locations, replacement value etc (suggested by @AngriBuddhist and @toddnach)
In one of the other threads, I noticed a neat workaround for the current lack of create custom Categories:
@DS625 I've added Tags to my "custom" templates, and created Smart Folders to filter based on those tags. Then, I've hidden the pre-defined Categories so things look the way I want.
This method of creating "pseudo" custom Categories works today in the current version of 1Password 4.
@ansciath Maybe none of these were even on the radar when it was still called 1Passwd. The application still has a heavy stress on website logins (not complaining, my life would be much more difficult without), but my usage patterns are outgrowing this focus.
Totally agree with this. Many people have commented that the 1Password app itself, as well as the way they use it, has grown from storing simple web site logins to managing all kinds of other information. During that time, the world has changed as well: it's evolved from a "web 1.0+" kind of world, where the main security concern was remembering usernames and passwords for a lot of different web sites, to more of an "internet of things" kind of world where the "thing" you're logging in to is often a device or appliance or app, rather than a web site — and this is surely going to increase over time. This was the main basis for most of my own custom Category suggestions in the first post above.
I get the slight impression that 1Password still carries with it some of the assumptions and design decisions of the "web 1.0+" era in which I'm guessing it was originally conceived. Of course, you can store any information you like in 1Password by customizing fields, using folders, tags etc — no-one's saying you can't. But whenever I use a Login to store something which isn't a web site Login, it feels a little as though I'm shoehorning it into something that was designed for storing web site logins. My non-web site Logins feel somehow like poor cousins of my web site Logins, because they're in the same Category, and they're kind of lost in a sea of web site logins — despite the existence of various workarounds involving folders, tags or smart folders. Personally I hope that the app will break free of this website-centric philosophy in future and become more flexible, for example by letting me have different types of Logins, not all jumbled together.
And any Category should be able to have a clickable web site field if you want, without it being a Login. In fact, why not introduce a third custom field type "url" that you can use anywhere, in addition to text and password?
@ansciath I use Secure Notes as a catch-all when an item doesn't fit a pre-defined category.
Secure Notes are fine, but sometimes the nature of the data you're storing is more suited to custom fields, with their name-value pair structure. Custom fields can make the data more readable, and much easier to copy to the clipboard. So I use custom fields where it makes sense — but that requires a Category other than Secure Notes, despite the fact that they are the only truly "generic" Category, because Secure Notes can't have custom fields (why not?)
@AngriBuddhist a family database for all sorts of miscellaneous information
Yes, I've been using 1Password for some of that kind of thing too. I used to store all my miscellaneous information in text files and a few spreadsheets, and even now much of this data suits the free-form unstructured format of a text file, or the tabular sortable format of a spreadsheet.
Slowly though, I've been moving some of this data into 1Password. My original motivation for doing this was because it's "sensitive" information, e.g. financial or medical, which needs to be encrypted. But, when I move data into 1Password, I find myself storing it in a subtly different ways compared to how it was stored as files on my filesystem, due to the design of the app.
For example, 1Password doesn't let you store a file like a PDF on its own — it must be stored as an attachment to another 1P "item". That item must have a name, and may also have custom fields, a notes field, tags etc. The net effect is this kind of encourages you to effectively "annotate" the attachment with a greater amount of meta-data, which says what the file is and why you're keeping it, compared to when it was just a file in a filesystem. Similarly, custom fields can be extremely useful, and are quite unlike anything that existed in my filesystem before.
So in summary, although I only move stuff into 1Password usually because I want to encrypt it, it ends up being structured in a different, and generally a better way, than it was before.
I'd very much like to see the app grow in its capabilities as a kind of database for storing both structured and unstructured miscellaneous information.
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@semblance, what would probably be most useful to me would be a catalog of categories. Rather than 1Password being stocked with a myriad of overlapping and potentially confusing categories, I'd like to be able to browse through some AgileBits repository and download categories relevant to the items I want to create. A downloaded category would have the apposite labels pre-defined, ready to go for a new item. If no relevant category is available, I'd like to be able to create a custom category and upload it to the repository for others to use.
None of that is likely to happen (for a variety of reasons), but I'll cling to the hope of being pleasantly surprised someday.
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Now @ansciath that is a fantastic idea — all it would take is for custom categories to be exportable into a simple text-based format, and the production of fully-localized categories for all sorts of different domains could be entirely crowdsourced!
Now that I think about it, when you take the number of different categories that could be useful, multiplied by the number of languages, and (in many cases) country-specific variants, there are thousands of categories... far too many to be centrally generated, maintained and downloaded in the core application. And yet, they would still benefit from being made available on demand somehow.
Category crowdsourcing is clearly the way forward! :-D
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I would love custom categories and like some in this thread have used Secure Notes (and thanks to this thread added tags)...custom categories would definitely be better, but this is a start based on current functionality.
@ansciath fantastic idea - this would be taking custom categories to another level. I use iRules for home automation and they have this type of crowd sourcing functionality for templates, icons, etc.
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@semblance - Above, you mention baggage from the "web 1.0+" era, yet, I don't think it's as simple as remnants of earlier design decisions. In another thread discussing custom categories (http://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/comment/101447), I made the following comments -
"Under it all, 1password is a database even though it's focus (and it's reason for success) has been on using more secure passwords as conveniently as possible."
"If AgileBits starts adding new and often requested categories such as Inventory, Cars, Places, Customers, etc., then the focus and marketing of 1Password starts to get muddled."
"On the other hand, adding Custom Categories allows all the benefits of moving 1Password into the more general database product market, while maintaining it's focus on being a password manager."
"And finally, is there an actual reason that AgileBits should actually decide to do this? Will they lose customers or potential customers if they don't? For now, I'd have to say no, not until a database developer adds a web browser to their product and starts using it for password entry. Or will they retain or gain customers? It's hard to say. How many people looking for a database app would choose 1Password over a competing product? Would AgileBits be willing to adjust their marketing to include the "other stuff" in an attempt to attract customers from the wider database consumer base? In the long run, do the costs and benefits, in both the financial terms as well as the potential shift in marketing focus, make sense to AgileBits? Only they can say."
I believe that adding custom categories to 1P isn't just a technical or design decision, it's most likely also one of marketing or product positioning.
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These are very insightful and interesting comments, @AngriBuddhist.
One thing I'd like to clarify: when I mentioned 'baggage from the "web 1.0+" era', I was specifically talking about web site Logins vs. other kinds of Logins (i.e. for devices, appliances, apps, web services and files). The latter definitely are a core part of 1Password's mission — and yet to me, they do not feel like first-class citizens. Now of course AgileBits will say (and have said): just store them as Logins and don't use the "website" field, and you can do that. But I still want to have them in separate categories. If you look at my original category suggestions above, nearly all them are about storing credentials of some kind (passwords, pass phrases, security codes); they are just not for web sites.
However, we all know how easy is is to get from storing "web site credentials", to storing "any kind of credentials", and from there to "any kind of sensitive data" — and finally to "any kind of data at all". Where do you draw the boundary? How much of your data is "sensitive"? And how sensitive is it — does it need the same level of protection as passwords?
Even if I use 1Password only for sensitive data that needs the same level of protection to passwords, there are still a lot of extra custom categories I'd want to create!
And let's say I have a bunch of miscellaneous domestic data, and I work out that 48% of it is sensitive and 52% is not. Do I really want to use two different apps: a credential vault for the 48% of sensitive data and a "database app" for everything else?
(Having said that, I use a task management app, and much of the data I keep in there is in some way "sensitive"... and I can't imagine 1Password ever filling that spot. But I always know the difference between a task and a piece of general data, so at least I know which app to look in.)
But what is a "database app" anyway? Are there any apps out there with a friendly UI that let you store miscellaneous data — some of it structured, some of it semi-structured, and some of it unstructured — which also sync between devices? Do they encrypt your data? Do they store it in the cloud? I'm sure there are all kinds, although I haven't investigated.
Should we just encrypt our devices at the device level (full disk encryption), and get a "database app" instead? And only use 1Password for Logins?
I don't know the answer to any of these questions... you really got me thinking though. And as you say, regarding the future of 1Password there's a focus vs. flexibility tradeoff.
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@AngriBuddhist: Personally, I would like to see 1Password evolve into something more of a 1Credential. Not only would this suit my own uses for the application, but I'd like to see it stick around for a while, which means staying competitive in a space that is growing more crowded. Security and browser integration have always been strengths of 1Password, strengths that now also include easy cross-device syncing and a myriad of ancillary features. But these advantages are diminishing as differentiators, as the gap between real competitors is narrowed. (Heck, even the Apple Keychain is starting to look like a competitor.) Five years ago there was hardly an alternative. Today, there are many, with varied features and pricing strategies.
Obviously, none of us is in a position to evaluate properly AgileBits' business model. The best I can do is voice my concerns regarding behaviors and features, in the hopes that I am representative of a larger user base. And I want custom categories. :-)
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I'm desperate for this. I have a small company and some of my customers pay me with credit cards. They appreciate it when I save their cards for future use. However, I want to do this securely, certainly not in the Mac's Address book! I've been using SplashData but I just bought this because it seems to be a product that actually works. I really need the ability to store these credit card numbers responsibly, and in a different place than my own. Please add this feature now. Thanks for listening.
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lenny_eiger wrote:
I'm desperate for this. I have a small company and some of my customers pay me with credit cards. They appreciate it when I save their cards for future use. However, I want to do this securely, certainly not in the Mac's Address book!
Why not just store them in a spreadsheet in a password-protected sparse bundle disk image? That's what I do for sensitive business data.
David
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I'm sure this could be done. However, having had so many drives cook on me over the past 27 years I don't like using hard drives for securing things. I'm not a fan of FileValult, for example. I thought a password keep could be just thing. It's organized... I have a database that runs my company and could keep them in there as well. It's secure. I like that 1Password also does other things... multiple use...
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And there it is. An iOS app that's replicating 1Passwords major feature, auto-fill, but making it even faster by having a list of thumbnails rather than nested folders, and an entry method that is a pretty neat idea.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/loginbox-website-login-manager/id554782625?mt=8
Although, there doesn't appear to be the options for password generation or Dropbox sync, yet, the $5.99 price tag for the fully unlocked version is only 60% of 1Password's typical on-sale price of $9.99.
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While I think it would be nice to create our own categories, there are other aspects of it that I think would serve me better.
While there is a need for many users to be able to have more categories, in some ways there are categories that are too small, suggesting in one way there are too many and some should be combined. For example, Social Security and Passports. For me separate categories mean I have 2 categories with only two items each. For wireless routers how many exist in a family? Usually one, maybe two. Identities? Two to six in a typical family. Car registrations? Let me put then in a category with licenses. @dberezin I could put my 2 car insurances in a 'Car' category with registrations and licenses and have a category with 6 items. @semblance I think a catalog would work well. It would save a good deal of duplicated effort among many users trying to make the same categories on their own. But I think there should still be the ability to make your own when one of the catalog categories. They should also provide a catalog of icons to go with categories and also for items in the categories.I would prefer 1Password first let us rename the categories that exist and drag items from one category to another. Admittedly I have a small set of passwords compared to some, and for me there are enough categories but the names don't fit the way I would use them. And now that we can add new sections and fields to any category, we can change any category to be suitable for almost any need. So do we need to be able to add new categories? Maybe. Especially for users with very large databases the number of categories might be too small. For me with 250 items the 15 categories are good, just let me rename them and move items around. Also, along with that we should be able to change the icon to match the new use or name of the category.
The login category I don't think is really necessary. If each of the other categories could have login information the would work like the login category, i.e. be able to automatically load fields and login to a site it could be eliminated. Most every item I have in other categories also has login information but as it works now I have to maintain information for an item in two categories and two entries. Examples are: my bank account entries and credit care entries each have a web page to login for online banking and account maintenance; each of my email entries also have a web login to either maintain the account and/or do web mail; my wireless router entry has a login; and so on for my memberships, reward programs, etc. For the leftover places that exist only in the login category they can be put into categories more descriptive such as: online shopping, forum accounts, social accounts, etc.
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@BobAllison The login category I don't think is really necessary. If each of the other categories could have login information the would work like the login category, i.e. be able to automatically load fields and login to a site it could be eliminated. Most every item I have in other categories also has login information but as it works now I have to maintain information for an item in two categories and two entries.
I'd certainly like the Login category to no longer be treated as special, so items in any category can take on the characteristics of a Login if you add the relevant field(s). Already, you can take an item in any category, and add username and/or password fields to it using custom fields. But I'd like to see this taken further:
- if you add a "web site" field to an item in any category, that field should become a clickable URL, and 1Password should fetch the icon from the web site and use that as the item's icon, as it does with Logins
- if you add the holy trinity (web site, username and password) to any item, it should automatically inherit the "autofill" capability using browser plugins, as you suggested
However even if this were possible, I wouldn't necessarily always want to do it this way. For example, for my bank I have one set of login credentials, but with that bank I have two Bank Accounts (a current account and a savings account), and three Credit Cards (a debit card in my name, a credit card in my name, and a credit card in another name). Which item am I going to add the login data to? They all come from the same bank and use the same login, so in this case I think it makes to keep the Login as a separate item, and somehow link it to the multiple Bank Account and Credit Card items, which is what I do today. It would be nice to have a better way to express this linkage though.
@BobAllison For the leftover places that exist only in the login category they can be put into categories more descriptive such as: online shopping, forum accounts, social accounts, etc.
If you want to categorize Logins in this way you can also use folders or tags, or tags combined with a set of smart folders, where each smart folder finds items with a specific tag.
Is there anything in particular about folders or tags that makes them inadequate for organizing things in this way? Why would categories be any better?
In fact, I think tags may actually be better for this, because then a web site can then be given multiple tags e.g. Apple, Google might fall into more than one of: shopping, discussion, backup, cloud, news, hosting, etc.
For what it's worth, I don't bother categorizing Logins in this way at all — I personally find it's too much work, for too little benefit.
Regardless, this discussion begs a fundamental question: what is a category?
By that I mean, are categories intended for items with different data structures (i.e. different sets of fields), or can they be used for items with merely different data (i.e. the same fields, but with different values) reflecting some real-world taxonomies?
Before the introduction of custom fields, it was clear that categories provided different sets of fields. But custom fields have blurred things somewhat: now categories provide different default sets of fields, with the occasional bit of magic thrown in such as autofill for Logins. Items in different categories can now easily be made to contain the same fields, if you want.
Custom categories would blur things even more, because as @BobAllison indicates, people might create different categories which actually have identical sets of fields, to mirror real-word taxonomies such as different types of web sites, where only the data in the items varies, not their structure.
If this happens, and items can be freely dragged between categories, then how will categories be any different from folders? They won't! They'll just be more buckets where you can put things. The only difference is that they'll be orthogonal to folders — a sort of parallel folder structure. Maybe categories ultimately become useful sets of default fields for creating new items only, and not primarily buckets to store them in?
At the end of the day, maybe a category should be anything you want it to be. And why not? :-D
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I've been enjoying the thoughtful discussion so far, so thanks to everyone for that. I came across this thread because I was just looking up some more info on 1P categories as I'm in the process of converting from my old password app (Moxier).
In Moxier, I had more categories (Types) to choose from from the get go, and there was a facility for creating custom categories. Custom fields were not implemented, so if you wanted a unique record, you had to create a custom type for it. in switching over, I've already taken advantage of the custom field feature a number of times and find it very helpful for bringing record data in line with unique descriptors.
To me, a category is a default set of fields for a record. One of the things I became accustomed to in Moxier was referencing my records by category. There were no folders, only categories and tags. It was convenient to hit the CC category and see all my cards listed. I able to do the same in 1P. One of the things I like about 1P more is that only categories that are in use are shown. In Moxier, they were all listed in the sidebar whether used or not. It's this specific feature of 1P that makes me wonder what the problem is with having more (or custom) categories. If I wanted a distinct category for Frequent Flyer cards, what's the harm in that? Honestly, some of the category options in 1P leave me scratching my head. We have databases and outdoor license but no general identification category.
For sake of discussion, here is a list of categories I used on my former password manager that I'm having trouble matching up with 1P categories and some notes about them.
Appliances: Records included serial number and purchase date. I actually used this for keeping track of computers. As for why 1P should be tracking this admittedly non-sensitive data...I found that after going to a manufacturers website and logging into the support section, the next thing I immediately need is the serial number of the device (or appliance) I am looking into. Having that in the same app turned out to be very helpful. As mentioned in a previous post, if this "appliance" record could be linked with the manufacturers website "login" record, it would be super helpful and avoid having to enter the same data twice and make it easier to navigate between records.
Combinations: There are still people who use one off combinations and need to store them somewhere. I still own some combination locks, and regularly deal with encrypted files that have an individual "secret" or "combination".
Family Info: I didn't really use this category, but I think that some people might. The records included things like shirt size, pant size, DOB, etc. Not exactly sensitive information, but I already tend to keep things like SSN and DL numbers for my family in other categories, so I could see consolidating that all here. The initial category could be pretty basic, but by using custom fields it can be extended as much as needed.
Frequent Flyer: I've got a few of these between the wife and I. I'm honestly not sure where to put them. Maybe membership or Rewards. Once again, this seems to me a like a record that could really use a link to the login credentials.
ID (Identification): I have a number of different ID cards that are not DL or SSN. A general ID category could handle these all, and honestly, with custom fields, this category could be a catch all for all ID's (DL, SSN, FOID, Etc)
Insurance: I've been putting all of these entries into Memberships. It seems like it was designed with the right fields. No big deal, but I would prefer to call it Insurance for my own use.
Prescriptions: Not one I used, but could be handy. Mostly sensitive information, not something I would want to keep in my Notes app.
Vehicle Info: This category was mentioned earlier. Once again, not exact sensitive, but would be nice to have.
Without adding individual categories, adding a custom category functionality would provide users the flexibility to do whatever they want. Though as it seems that categories are just record templates, I can't see why this would be so difficult.
As for what 1P is intended to be...it's primarily a username/password keeping utility with auto login functionality. In performing this task, it's also a database for sensitive information. There is so much sensitive information these days that needs to be kept track of, and not all of it is in the form of a username/password. If we already have records built in for Outdoor Licenses and Software Licenses, I don't see how adding additional categories (or custom categories) will dilute the product. In fact, one of the reasons I chose 1P over it's competitors was the flexibility it already has. I tested it against Dashlane and mSsecure. In short, Dashlane was TOO focused for me. mSecure was extremely freeform, but failed to present the data as well and coherently as 1P
I've already gone on far too long. Basically, I would love to see additional, or custom categories. I think it would only help the product.
Although this could be an entire post on it's own, in addition to categories, here are the few things I've noticed about 1P that could be added to make it a much better product.
iOS: Support for tags (shocked that this doesn't exist already)
iOS: Along with tags, support for custom folders as well.
Password creation: when I generate a new password in a record, it should automatically be copied to the clipboard
Password creation: I should easily be able to keep generating passwords until I get one I like, without having to go through the click gymnastics I do currently.
Record Linking: As mentioned earlier in this thread, being able to link a login record into another record, such as a membership, reward program, or bank, would be pretty awesome. AFAIK, there is no other product capable of doing this. It would be unique and set 1P apart from the competition.
Thanks.
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