Attachment size limit

Drew_AG
Drew_AG
1Password Alumni
This discussion was created from comments split from: Feature request: Save as PDF to 1Password secure note.

Comments

  • Berend
    Berend
    Community Member

    The maximum size is only 5 MB, that's too little.............

  • Drew_AG
    Drew_AG
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @Berend,

    Thanks for contacting us about that! I hope you don't mind, but I've moved your message to a different discussion, since it's a bit of a different topic than the previous thread.

    Although 1Password is a great place to securely store information, we don't recommend using it as a file storage solution. There are a couple reasons why we limit the size of attachments:

    One is that the encryption process is resource intensive on some platforms and/or devices supported by 1Password. Although it might not be a problem on most modern Macs, many (if not most) 1Password customers also sync their data to other types of devices where it might be a problem.

    Speaking of syncing, big files can take longer to sync, but more importantly than that is the amount of data used - this can easily affect those who sync over a cellular data connection but have a limit on their data plan. Also, many mobile devices (and even some computers) don't have much storage space. Your 1Password data is stored locally on each device, so having big attachments can quickly fill that up. For example, Apple still sells 16 GB iPhones, and we try to be aware of how 1Password can impact those users.

    I'm sorry for the inconvenience! Hopefully this at least helps to give some perspective on why the limit exists, even if you don't agree with it. I can certainly let our developers know you'd like to raise the attachment size limit in 1Password (although I can't make any promises about if/when that might change). We're here for you if you have more questions! :)

  • NoOneHere
    NoOneHere
    Community Member
    edited April 2016

    I ran into this problem this afternoon. With all due respect, it's not your business to control what the maximum file size we store in an attachment should be--there are obvious and absurd extremes like home movies that are taking up hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes but 5MB is pretty easily passed with an average digital photo.

    You can certainly warn me as the consumer of your product that this isn't a recommended usage but I should still have control. There is really no need to enumerate the legitimate usages you are restricting your customers from in the secure notes functionality but I will list a few.

    Perhaps it's being used to store profile or detail photographs of something you have insured for your own records--quite a few insurers require this sort of thing and perhaps you want to have a secure note for each scheduled item in a folder of scheduled items.

    Perhaps it's storing prior year tax returns or some large(ish) PDF files that are relevant to what's contained in the secure note (whether they be legal documents or not I have an interest in protecting them by encryption).

    Or it could, you know, be a photo of my dog; because I can...

    Remove the limit (or at minimum let me configure it).

  • Hi @NoOneHere ,

    Thanks for taking the time to write in with your feedback! We actually used to have a warning that allowed the customer to remove the warning. Unfortunately, people clicked it, and didn't have problems until months later when their vault grew to a point that when setting up a new device, they had trouble setting it up because sync either timed out on a slow data connection, or took forever. People also had issues when they closed laptops before sync had a chance to finish. Just upping the limit would not be a good solution as it will not result in a good experience.

    With that said, I'm not saying we can't come up with a solution. It would just have to be more involved than just removing the limit. I'll pass your feedback on to the development team as feedback does affect the way features are designed and prioritized.

    Regards,
    Kevin

  • p4800
    p4800
    Community Member

    What is the practical limit for attachments?

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @p4800: The current limit is 5MB, but it's something we'll continue to evaluate going forward.

  • I'm also frustrated by this limit. I'd like to archive some personal documents in the vault, and while most of them are reasonably sized, I do have a couple of very large scanned PDFs that won't go any smaller than 20MB. Now, I could manually edit these and split them into several different PDFs, but you're just making me do busy work; the stored size is the same, so this feels like a pointless exercise.

    1Password is the ideal storage for these docs; the alternative is for me to find a way to securely encrypt and store these out of band. Since I'm a busy person, I'm more inclined to go looking for alternative solutions than to come up with something home brewed. I love your software; please don't make me give money to someone else over an arbitrary limit. Please give me control and allow me to choose to put the occasional large file in my notes.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @wezfurlong: I think it might be easier to compress it, perhaps split into multiple archive parts if necessary. Manually editing is more cumbersome, and makes the resulting document(s) more difficult to work with again later.

    1Password simply isn't designed for this use case though, so you're kind of trying to put a square peg into a round hole; it's a password manager, and I think it's important that we focus on making it even better at that. Certainly we can consider adding support for larger files in the future, but there's a lot we'd have to consider for syncing, etc. Anyway, if we take this to its logical conclusion, 1Password ends up being a PDF editor too, and ends up being mediocre at that, at archiving, and most likely at being a password manager.

    And honestly if you're using a Mac anyway, encrypted disk images are designed for exactly this, and since it's built into the OS you don't need to install or buy anything else to use them. Much nicer for archiving files of any size. I hope this helps!

  • djackson
    djackson
    Community Member

    Is this 5 MB limit still in place as of 2017-09? If so, why doesn't 1password inform the user of it? I saved a 20 MB zip file as a document in my account and there was no indication that it wouldn't work. When I went to another computer, it wasn't there. When I went back to the original computer, 1password shows me the attachment but I cannot download it. It's like it is a ghost now. This is deeply frustrating.

  • rudy
    edited September 2017

    @djackson,

    The limit for local vaults is 5MB, 1Password.com accounts should allow you to attach a document up to 2GB in size.

    Rudy

    ref: YGE-25689-657

  • djackson
    djackson
    Community Member

    Thanks @rudy. A (really) quick scan of the documentation last night didn't show anything about limits although I expected there to be some.

    I suspect my issue (that I sent to AgileBits) with the first document was me adding the doc to a personal vault and then moving to a shared vault before the file fully synced.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @djackson -- that may very well be; if you have a chance, can you try deleting the item from 1Password and re-uploading it? Give it a bit to make sure the upload is complete, then see if you can see it from all devices as you would expect. Thanks and let us know how that goes for you!

  • djackson
    djackson
    Community Member

    I ended up re-uploading it to a new document. The final size was 21.5 MB and it worked just fine; I had to leave the app open on my iPhone for a while to make sure it uploaded. I don't remember there being an indication that it was uploading or completed.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @djackson - thanks for the follow-up. Glad to hear the re-uploaded attachment worked properly. :) :+1:

This discussion has been closed.