iCloud Drive Support in Win 10? [Use Folder Sync]

Psychor
Psychor
Community Member
edited September 2018 in 1Password 7 for Windows

With the Apple iCloud app installed on Windows 10 we can now directly access files stored on our iCloud Drive.

I confirmed this today by uploading files stored on my iPhone XS to my iCloud Drive account from my iPhone XS and then seeing if these files were fully accessible from the Windows 10 using the iCloud app. They are.

For those not using the subscription option in 1Password and missing to store our password file online, when will 1Password for Windows support having our password file stored in iCloud as opposed to only Dropbox?

Thanks.


1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided

Comments

  • Hi @Psychor,

    Thanks for writing in.

    1Password 7 for Windows support Folder sync, you can save the vault anywhere on your drive, including your iCloud drive. 1Password will then monitor that vault and keep it in sync. This means you can use iCloud Drive to sync the same vaults between macOS, Windows, and Android if Apple ever releases the iCloud Drive app that could export to the device's local storage. However, iOS does not support syncing directly from iCloud Drive because Apple uses something else for syncing, CloudKit. CloudKit is what allows for seamless syncing between all of your Apple platforms using just your iCloud account, it is not related to iCloud Drive which is used to store documents, not for specific app's sync data.

    1Password on macOS and iOS uses CloudKit (which we call iCloud), which means you cannot reuse your iCloud account with Windows nor Android at this moment. You can opt-out of CloudKit, switch to Folder Sync on macOS to sync to iCloud Drive but you can only use WLAN Sync on macOS to sync your data to the iOS devices.

    There is no production-ready CloudKit implementation available on Windows nor Android at this moment, Apple has a method using CloudKit JS APIs but it is not meant for production apps, only for web apps. It would be awesome if Apple could provide these implementations but we don't anticipate them doing this anytime soon.

  • Psychor
    Psychor
    Community Member

    Thank you @MikeT.

    All I care about in this example is being able to read/write a 1Password file from/to iCloud Drive. In Windows and in iOS on my iPhone I can read/write a file stored on iCloud Drive. Why can't 1Password simply support reading/writing from/to iCloud Drive?

    Don't other iOS applications support reading/writing from/to iCloud Drive?

  • Greg
    Greg
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @Psychor,

    iCloud drive is for files, not syncing. Apple's supported method for syncing app data via iCloud is not iCloud Drive, but CloudKit. If we don't follow Apple's guidance on this stuff, we risk to be left in a bad situation when they change things. For example, if we hadn't moved to 64-bit on iOS and macOS years ago, we'd be in trouble now.

    If you don't want to use a 1Password account, please try to use Sync via Dropbox in 1Password for Windows. 1Password vault file doesn't take too much space, so a basic Dropbox account (which is free) should be enough.

    Let me know if it helps. Thank you!

    Cheers,
    Greg

  • Psychor
    Psychor
    Community Member

    Hi @Greg,

    I don't want to use Dropbox, I want to use Apple's cloud service - iCloud Drive. I'm confused, if you allow reading/writing of files from/to Dropbox, why not iCloud Drive? I fail to see the technical difference. I use both and they appear to function in the same way.

    Thanks.

  • MikeT
    edited October 2018

    Hi @Psychor,

    I fail to see the technical difference. I use both and they appear to function in the same way.

    The keyword is appear. They're designed to feel the same way but they function completely differently.

    For Dropbox, we're not using their app, you cannot use the Dropbox app to sync anything on the iOS platform. What you can do is use Dropbox API to make calls to their service and pull data from your Dropbox account. That's what we do with Dropbox in 1Password and that's how CloudKit (iCloud sync) sort of works.

    iOS is locked down, each app do not have access to a file system. They cannot escape their own sandbox, they can import and open files from iCloud Drive with your permission but that does not mean they can just make changes to it on their own, they need to do so with your permission. Basically, apps are importing and exporting each time you have to make a change with you invoking that function.

    We can import and export manually if we want but it doesn't provide a great experience for us. We use CloudKit because it means when you open 1Password on a new device, you're up and running as you've signed in to your iCloud account. It also means when you make changes to your 1Password data, it's done. There's no "tap here to save to your iCloud Drive" each time you make a change.

    On Android, it's different. Apps can have a protected access to the local file system. That's how 1Password's Folder Sync works on Android, it can sync with any folders on your Android storage, so you can install Dropbox, Google Drive, to sync folders to local storage and 1Password can then access it any time it wants to update. There's no export/import required.

    At this moment, we have no plans to change from CloudKit to iCloud Drive. Dropbox and 1Password.com service are the only supported ways to sync 1Password data between iOS and Windows PCs.

  • Psychor
    Psychor
    Community Member

    Hi @MikeT,

    That makes complete sense to me. Thanks for the detailed reply. Hopefully you and other companies are providing feedback to Apple that they need to bring full iCloud support to the Windows platform.

    Take care.

  • MikeT
    edited October 2018

    You're welcome, @Psychor.

    Yes, we are trying to provide feedback. In fact, we've built an open-source implementation of CloudKit Javascript SDK to allow 1Password outside of the Mac App Store to use your iCloud account to sync your data. (Blog post: https://blog.agilebits.com/2016/05/05/agilebits-presents-agilecloudsdk/). Apple later extended CloudKit support to all macOS apps (we're not sure it is because of us but who knows :smile:).

    The thing is, Apple has provided a CloudKit Javascript implementation for web apps as well. We're not sure they're interested in building the Windows version of the CloudKit SDK. We may be interested in doing the same thing on Windows but the difference is, we know how it works on macOS but we don't know how it'd work on Windows. It's a much larger project that may take the same resources as building 1Password for Windows and so as you can imagine, it's not something we can spare at the moment as we still have a lot of work to improve 1Password on Windows.

  • spacemn_spiff
    spacemn_spiff
    Community Member

    With Dropbox free now only supporting three devices, I need to find an alternative to Dropbox for the 4 devices (two iOS and two Windows 10) that I use 1password on. I thought iCloud drive might be a good option, but this thread shows that it cannot be done.

    Are there other cloud services not as expensive as Dropbox but that is supported by 1password?

    How does one transfer the vault from Dropbox to iCloud if I have to. Is it simple copy and paste into iCloud drive? Will 1Password recognize the new location for the vault?

  • Hi @spacemn_spiff

    Our 1Password membership service has no limit on the number of devices that can be used and was built from the ground up custom tailored to sync 1Password data. That is the recommended way forward. You can read more about membership here:

    About 1Password membership

    Dropbox is the only supported option other than 1Password membership that works across Windows and iOS for syncing 1Password data. I hope that helps. Should you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to ask.

    Ben

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