1Password ⌘ \ shortcut active in other apps [intentional, but can be modified using 3rd party tool]

I use this shortcut in both the browser and Visual Studio Code all the time. My muscle memory has been tripping me up a lot the past few days.

A workaround might be to use Hammerspoon. It's an open source tool that lets you script just about everything in MacOS. I'd recommend setting the global 1Password shortcut to a keybinding you never use, then catching CMD+\ with Hammerspoon and using hs.eventtap.keyStroke to emit the new 1Password shortcut if Visual Studio Code isn't the active window. I'll play around with it and post a script here if I come up with something useful.

Here's what I came up with. It Works On My Machine (TM).

1. Install Hammerspoon and follow the setup guide.

2. In 1Password options, set Fill Login or Show 1Password to CMD+F12. I forget if that's the one set to CMD+\ by default? I cleared the Show 1Password shortcut.

3. In Visual Studio Code, edit keyboard shortcuts and set Toggle Side Bar Visibility to CMD+F11. This is because Hammerspoon seems to have problems generating a backslash keystroke.

4. Edit ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua and add the following:

-- Use Cmd+\ to show 1Password everywhere except Visual Studio Code
function activate_1password()
  local client = hs.application.frontmostApplication()
  if client:title() == 'Code' then
    hs.eventtap.keyStroke({"cmd"}, "f11")
  else
    hs.eventtap.keyStroke({"cmd"}, "f12")
  end
end
hs.hotkey.bind({"cmd"}, "\\", activate_1password)

Enjoy!

Thanks for this @JamesD, but I must say I find it a bit odd that we have to resort to this kind of work around. I'm sticking with v6 for now.

I just hit this with Atom and found this post. I don't think it's right to introduce a new shortcut - intercepting this same shortcut in prior use by existing apps - without warning. It should instead be something you "opt-in" to using, when there's no conflict.

Hi @Jacob, thanks for your responses earlier, but in your second post I think you may have misunderstood the question. When kylegach asked:

Alternatively, is there a way to define different shortcuts for the browser extension(s) than the global one used by 1Password Mini?

And you replied

Yes, you can change this in 1Password > Preferences under General. It's the "Fill Login or Show 1Password" shortcut. :)

I believe your answer is in reference to the main 1password mac app, but I believe he was asking if there was a way to set a different hotkey for the 1password Chrome extension specifically. Then we can disable/change the global 1password mac app shortcut, and our other app shortcuts will work fine again.

I've looked and I don't think your Chrome extension has any settings at all, and I've seen other Chrome extensions that have keyboard shortcut settings, so I'd like to request that feature please!

Secondly, I think I've found a bug with the main 1password mac app, in the keyboard shortcuts settings. Firstly I see that the "Show 1password" shortcut is set to Cmd+Option+\ so I unset that, then I try to change the "Fill Login" shortcut to that same shortcut: Cmd+Option+\ and I get an error saying "The key combination Command+C can't be used". Can you reproduce that?

Thanks for your help.

@JamesD thank you so much for this, Hammerspoon is exactly what I need!! Managing different shortcuts for different workstation environments was driving me insane. You are the real MVP.

I'd also really love to be able to disable this outside of browsers. Very used to command-\ and would love to keep that but also not have it offer to fill password in Xcode.

I honestly feel this is a security issue. If I invite a colleague to code a bit with me and I let them use VS Code they now have full access to my 1 Password if they happen to know the trigger and happen to be within the lock threshold? I would also suspect the majority of users expect it to work only in the browser anyway so why this is defaulted to a global by default seems odd.

This is really frustrating, I've been using 1Password for years and have the ⌘\ shortcut burnt into my memory. I just switched over to 1Password 7 and now I'm having the same conflict in Visual Studio Code as others have mentioned. What's the logic for making this shortcut global now? There's already a separate shortcut for "Show 1Password", I don't need the Fill Login shortcut to attempt to log in to every single unsupported application on my computer. Making this particular shortcut global seems to serve no purpose aside from screwing up our workflows.

Hi,
I'm a designer and the cmd + \ shortcut also interferes with my workflow (in my design tool).

On another thread @kpclements mentioned that TextExpander was having this option.
I can add that Spectacle also has this.

I have read a couple of threads on the same topic with very good points brought by the community. Are you guys monitoring the popularity of this request?