Work/Home 1Password DB

Switch between two DBs. One for work, one for home.
Is there anyway to have two different 1Password DBs? I'd like to use it at work for work logins and keep my home logins separate. Any ideas?

Comments

  • benfdc
    benfdc
    Community Member

    Is there anyway to have two different 1Password DBs? I'd like to use it at work for work logins and keep my home logins separate. Any ideas?

    This seems to come up a lot here. Apparently there are technical issues involved in switching between two keychains (e.g. the browser plug-ins can get confused), but even if those are resolved I wouldn't go that route.

    Have you considered creating different user accounts on your Mac for work and home use? Different wallpaper, apps on the Dock, etc. would give you visual cues to where (who) you are at any given time, which you would NOT have if you try to switch between 1P keychains as a single user. In general, using different accounts keeps your work and personal spheres separate--not just keychains (1P *and* OS X) but document folders, browser histories, etc.

    If you need to share resources between your two accounts, there are many solutions--OS X folder / file sharing, permissions, Dropbox (either using the same Dropbox account for both user accounts or sharing a folder between two Dropbox accounts), external Flash or hard drives, iDisk, etc.

    1P is licensed by user, not account, so I don't think that this solution would require purchase of a family license.

    It seems to me that this approach works cleanly for 1P/Mac and 1P/Win. For the iPad or iPhone apps, I guess you could use the app for one keychain and 1PasswordAnywhere for read-only access to the other one.
  • aaronbushnell
    aaronbushnell
    Community Member
    I definitely see what you're saying. Perhaps the developers will integrate a more seamless solution one of these days! I'd love to have maybe a "collaborated" 1Password database. That way I can have a personal (and hidden from coworkers) "Home" set and a shared "Work" set with my coworkers.

    Then I could hide my personal stuff and still collaborate on the work database full of passwords. Ideally all without switching the 1Password database or fiddling with another user account.

    But your suggestion is helpful for the current state of 1Password, so thanks!
  • sjk
    sjk
    1Password Alumni
    benfdc wrote:

    This seems to come up a lot here.

    It's definitely a top FAQ candidate. :)
  • aaronbushnell
    aaronbushnell
    Community Member
    Hate to beat a possible dead horse here, but after e-mailing an Agile rep about this questions I think I may have found an easier way of handling work vs home passwords.

    It would be great if 1Password had bookmarked databases. That way 1Password can still use the 1 database at a time but users can quickly switch to other databases. Perhaps something like this is a good compromise? It would be nice to be able to have full sharing but if this is not ever possible I'd like to be able to switch to another database much quicker than going through the preference pane.

    Thoughts?
  • MartyS
    MartyS
    Community Member
    Welcome to the forums, Aaron!

    The idea of having two or more sets of 1Password data to "switch" between, or the restricting of items to only certain individuals (with different "mini" master passwords) does come up often. The answer to that is much more complex than it seems: our application model isn't based on "documents" like many applications are. We have taken the approach of Apple's Mail and Address Book as it provides for a completely predictable way for all the varied 1Password components (main application, browser extensions and command-line tools) to safely interact with one another, not to mention the proper syncing of data to and from our mobile apps.

    We don't say "n e v e r", but changing the design model is not something we're currently looking to do but it's always possible that we might.

    While the current mechanism can be stretched to work in some cases it also leads to confusion and in some cases unsupportability and we don't want that for you.

    I'm sorry I don't have a better answer for you at this time.
  • aaronbushnell
    aaronbushnell
    Community Member
    Marty,

    I appreciate the response, explanation, and transparency! Not supporting shared passwords at the time doesn't, in any way, stop me from loving the product. Thanks for the hard work!
  • sjk
    sjk
    1Password Alumni
    edited September 2010
    MartyS wrote:

    The idea of having two or more sets of 1Password data to "switch" between, or the restricting of items to only certain individuals (with different "mini" master passwords) does come up often.

    It's of several recurring topics that easily qualifies to be FAQ'd. :)
  • kitmos
    kitmos
    Community Member
    edited September 2010
    sjk wrote:

    It's of several recurring topics that easily qualifies to be FAQ'd. :)

    After getting an iPad this is something I would wish for. There are aLOT of passwords/logins that I keep tract of but only a handful that I use on a daily basis.
    I would love to have an iPad specific group. Right now I’ve resorted to forcing frequently used logins to the top with **loginxx, but this is less than ideal. Plus I still don’t feel that comfortable carrying around my life on an iPad (or iPhone/Touch). The iPad keyboard has forced me to simplify my password somewhat since I have to log in each time to 1Password (hopefully IOS4 will make this easier). I might use the 1Password-iPad-browser if it had a Google search built it.

    Cheers,

    Kit
  • sjk
    sjk
    1Password Alumni
    kitmos wrote:

    I would love to have an iPad specific group.

    What about creating an iPad-specific group and just synching that? If/when Smart Folder syncing is supported (has anyone requested it?) you could create a SF matching any item with an iPad tag and sync that.
  • kitmos
    kitmos
    Community Member
    sjk wrote:

    What about creating an iPad-specific group and just synching that? If/when Smart Folder syncing is supported (has anyone requested it?) you could create a SF matching any item with an iPad tag and sync that.




    I would love to do that but, as I understand it, when syncing using drop box it's not possible to sync a subset.

    Cheers,

    Kit
  • sjk
    sjk
    1Password Alumni
    kitmos wrote:

    … , when syncing using drop box it's not possible to sync a subset.

    Sounds right - I vaguely remember reading about that limitation but haven't investigated Dropbox synching (yet).
  • kitmos
    kitmos
    Community Member
    sjk wrote:

    Sounds right - I vaguely remember reading about that limitation but haven't investigated Dropbox synching (yet).



    Other than that dropbox is wonderful (actually this really has nothing to do with dropbox....)

    Cheers,

    Kit
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