How to use 1Password to automate VPN login on Mac (non browser login window)

Thanks for taking time to answer this. Clearly 1Password provides much better support than others, like LastPass. Yesterday I switched from LastPass to 1Password and removed their extensions. I was considering doing this long time ago but didn't hat enough time to try it.

@sbarnea: Thank you for saying so, and for taking the time to take a look at 1Password! We certainly aren't perfect, but we strive to match our customers' awesomeness. People support us with their hard-earned money after all, so I think it's only fair that we support them with continued development, testing, and assistance. :blush:

Regarding auto-closing of threads, I don't see any reason why this "feature" would really need to exist. Look at StackOverflow, clearly the best community based website, it does not have any auto-closing of questions, only admins could close some topics but the general idea is that there is nothing wrong on keeping a thread/question open even for many years. Why? Imagine that you have a very old feature request, having a single thread keeps the discussions in place and avoids spamming the forum with new threads that are in fact re-asking the same questions. I don't expect any answers regarding this, it's just something to think about.

There are a number of reasons, but I think the best one (off the top of my head, at least) is that the overwhelming majority of the time, posts from more than a month ago even are obsolete in the sense that they contain outdated information. Of course, apart from the specifics of the software involved, this is one case where not much has changed on macOS (except the name) so the technical challenges to integrating with 3rd party apps which lack an extension framework remain. But while I can't speak for the original poster, I can say that I'd probably be confused and perhaps annoyed to start getting notifications for someone commenting on something I'd said 6 years ago (and likely long forgotten).

Obviously this may not be the case for everyone, but these are two things that come into play in this context which I think make a reasonable case for closing discussions after more than half a year. We actually shy away from closing discussions manually, but no interest in half a year I think indicates a lack of interest...and at the very least, a new thread like this I think provides a fresher perspective compared to someone piggybacking off of another person's thread to say "me too". I think you make a good counterargument, and it's certainly something we'll continue to evaluate. Of course, these patterns may change over time, so it isn't written in stone. But historically it doesn't come up often, and, in this case, it's taken 6 years. ;)

Regarding the original question: it is possible for applications to access non-browser windows, that's one of the reasons why Accessibility support in OS X exists. **1Password Mini ** is the kind of application that should be able to automate this, it's not a browser app.

Accessibility (and AppleScript, while comes up later) is incredibly useful and we already do a lot of work with it (for obvious reasons), but it's designed with a very different use case in mind. And when we repurpose one tool to do something other than its intended use, this can introduce problems, whether that be security issues or things just breaking when changes are made. More on this later.

Lets face it, doing copy and paste from 1Password in order to login to such a screen is a really painful process, if you want a proof I can even make a movie to exemplify the experience that involves multiple screens, some of them that open with delays and where a single miss click ruins the process.

I hear you. I'm sorry that this has proven to be such a hardship for you! I don't enjoy copy and paste myself, but doing that and storing data securely in 1Password is still, in many ways, better than the alternatives, which are markedly less secure (weak passwords, saving credentials, automation, etc.) Having used corporate VPNs over the years, I believe I can relate on some level to the user-unfriendliness that comes with many of the software and processes. Copy and paste is still much more convenient than manually typing (especially using ⌘ ⌥ \ to bring up 1Password mini), but hopefully we can find ways to make it even more convenient to use 1Password to login to apps in the future.

Imagine that 1Password mini would have a global shortcut that when triggered is checking the name of the current window and it completes the login. This would be an alternative to the watching of all opened windows, which can add some additional CPU load on a machine.

I do know that this use-case is quite advanced but remember this could also fix browser login issues where browsers do not implement accessibility support for BASIC HTTP AUTH.

With some help from AgileBits maybe we could build some example AppleScripts that are solving this use case.

If this is something we can do in the future, securely, we'd very much like to. As you can imagine, we encounter these things too, even if it may be in different contexts. There's a great extension API we use on iOS, and perhaps we'll be able to do something similar in the future. AppleScript is a great tool for general purpose automation, but the flip side of that is it doesn't have the same security properties. Accessibility and AppleScript are both very open and very powerful, which is what makes them useful. But this also means that, by design, there can be interactions with other software, which can range from inconvenient to insecure. So while I won't say "never", it may be best to find another way — preferably one that's supported by the OS and sanctioned by Apple. We need to make sure that 1Password is convenient and secure, so it's something we'll do only if we can without sacrificing the latter. Thanks so much for your feedback on this, and letting us know it's important to you too! :)