Does 1Password 7 have portability option yet? [No, it is not supported nor planned]

mia
mia
Community Member
edited May 2018 in 1Password 7 for Windows

Hi all,
I remember someone ( @brenty (?) ) posted that 1Password 6+ will have portability option. In other words, the 1Password 7 app would store all settings in its own folder instead of touching %appdata% and registry settings.

Is there a current status of if this is possible? Users have been asking for a long time so I am very hopeful with this new version!!


1Password Version: 7 BETA (latest)
Extension Version: Chrome/Beta LATEST
OS Version: Win10 Pro x64
Sync Type: Dropbox

Comments

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @mia: That's not quite what I said. But, while it is unsupported, the new 1Password app can be run from an arbitrary location. This will, however, break things like updates and browser integration, since that depends on the registry and inter-app communication to function. Can you tell me more about what you're trying to accomplish?

  • mia
    mia
    Community Member

    What I would like is to keep the settings locally in the folder. I keep my data on D:\ and my system is C:.
    I often times am forced to quickly reinstall. I understand some registry keys need to be stored in the registry; however, it is really inconvenient and troublesome to have 1Password 7 in my AppData folder. Please tell me I can move the 1Password folder?

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    Being "forced to quickly reinstall" sounds untenable. I hope you're able to get it sorted, whatever the problem is. Again, you can move the folder, but you'd have to update any references to it, and update it yourself manually. It's not something that's recommended or supported. If it helps, 1Password for Windows is a very small download, and installing it takes seconds. It really will be the easiest thing you do as part of setting up everything on the PC from scratch.

  • mia
    mia
    Community Member
    edited May 2018

    I am not sure why or how this is untenable. If every single app that I used was non-portable, it would make reinstalling Windows an absolute nightmare. Imagine, every single app had to be re-tuned. There are apps like CloneApp that will help, but I am honestly baffled what AgileBits has against portability. There seems to be some displaced aggression against it. Yes, installation may be easy, but multiply that by about 400 (yes, 400. See screenshot below) and you'll begin to understand my digital world. 99.7% of my software is portable or has been made portable or at least compartmentalize its settings to my D drive.
    https://i.imgur.com/qN7L5nh.png

    If you still don't believe me, Here's a great example. Microsoft's April 2018 update. As I tried to type this post, my computer froze 3 times. 3 TIMES. I am experiencing a 100% hard lock crash with Chrome because of this stupid update and it's a confirmed bug even after the 'May 2018' update that was pushed out by Microsoft engineers.

    With that said, I would love to move the folder and update the references manually as long as I wouldn't have to do it every single time after a C:\ reinstall. . Is there at least a basic set of instructions telling me what I need to update?

    Can you also provide information as to where every single file is? Here's what I had for for 1PW 4 and am looking for a similar list for 1PW 7.x

    • C:\Users\brenty\AppData\Roaming\AgileBits\OPW4.license
    • C:\Users\brenty\AppData\Local\AgileBits\OPX4.auth
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Agile Web Solutions
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AgileBits

    Here's what I have so far for 1PW 7.x. It seems like most of the settings ARE contained in a 1password folder. I couldn't find any registry keys that store settings or stuff anywhere else.

    C:\Users\brenty\AppData\Local\1password\app\7 [MAIN APP]
    C:\Users\brenty\AppData\Local\1password\backups
    C:\Users\brenty\AppData\Local\1password\data
    C:\Users\brenty\AppData\Local\1password\logs

    I don't care about PURE portability. I just want to point everything to 1 folder on my D drive which is [b]D:\Applications\1Password[/b]

    Please Mr. Brenty - you are my only hope! If I can get that 1Password folder in a single folder on my D drive and still working with Chrome (portable of course lol!), I'll be happy :)

  • mia
    mia
    Community Member
    edited May 2018

    Also, where does 1PW 7x store licensing info on the computer itself (NOT the license file that I downloaded from Agilebits)? I am a verifiable registered user now of 1PW 7.x (yay).

  • @mia 1Password for Windows is configured to work best for most of people, but we do recognize special cases exists. We use InnoSetup and there are ways to customize it. However, as of today attempt to customize breaks app updater. We have some ideas to try and if it works out well 1Password 7.1 might be more flexible about install path.

    Applied license is stored inside Credential Manager > Windows Credentials > Generic.

  • mia
    mia
    Community Member
    edited May 2018

    Hi Serge
    Sorry to bother you with this, but could you let me know where 1PW 7 stores every setting? I see the license is stored in credentials manager which is a shame (another post rewquested it be stored in the keychain itself) since one can’t back that up as far as I know.

    What about the other settings? I already put a bunch of the stuff I found on a previous post above. Does it use the registry at all for SETTINGS? again I don’t care about technical usage, just settings themselves that I have configured. I need to know becaus I am writing a script in clone app v2 to include those areas backed up.

    Is there some guide, any guide to configure 1PW 7 to be portable, even if it breaks the updater?

  • MikeT
    edited May 2018

    Hi @mia,

    Yes, we do use the registry to store the Native Messaging settings as it is needed for the 1Password browser extensions (look at Chrome/Firefox manifest in your app directory) and we store most of your configuration/settings in the user.json file via your %LOCALAPPDATA%\1Password\data directly. There are no defaults listed, it'll update the file when you change your settings.

    Is there some guide, any guide to configure 1Password 7 to be portable, even if it breaks the updater?

    You can try this Inno-Setup guide but note that we cannot provide any kind of support if you do this, even if you manage to break 1Password and go back to stable.

    There is no guide for portable version of 1Password as it doesn't exist and we're not going to provide one for an unsupported configuration.

    If when we do have a portable version, we'll have a guide but for now, this does not exist nor is it supported. I understand Brenty and Serg are trying to be helpful here but we have to be careful here and not provide information that may not work in a few months if we for an example, change our installer and your portability script breaks.

  • Murphdog
    Murphdog
    Community Member

    The portable option would be good for those of us that have to use computers that are not ours. I have to use Keepass on a flash drive at customer sites because I cannot install 1 Password and I would not want to login to the 1PW website on these public computers. Often the internet is blocked. I hate using two different products but that is what I have to do.

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @Murphdog: I hear you. But using 1Password in that setting is not recommended and not something we're going to design around. Nothing can protect data being accessed promiscuously on strange machines. Use 1Password on your phone, for crying out loud! :scream:

  • Murphdog
    Murphdog
    Community Member

    Hi. I don't expect 1PW to design around this. Just giving feedback hoping for future features. I get that its a resource and a business decision that 1PW has to make. An offline client would be helpful for some of us. If you have ever typed as 30+ character password or 50+ mixed character WiFi key manually, you should be able to understand that looking at your phone would be time consuming and unproductive.

  • Hi @Murphdog,

    We do understand, which is why we build and use 1Password. I constantly open 1Password on my iPhone to enter the guest Wi-Fi password on other devices that I don't own nor belongs to family. I get how painful it is but at the same time, it's still risky to run 1Password on anything that you don't own. Even if it is running on USB drive, the computer has to share its memory to decrypt your 1Password content, in other words, it's still a massive risk compared to just entering one password.

This discussion has been closed.