1Password 8.9.10

Originally published at: 1Password 8.9.10 - TidBITS

Brings improvements and bug fixes to the password manager. ($35.88 annual subscription new, free update, 2.9 MB, macOS 10.15+)

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Hello, this update doesnā€™t appear to be available in the UK app store yet (13Dec22); I have been waiting for an update that fixes a problem in the private enclave, I think it is called, that means I am unable to login with FaceID and must re-enter my master pw each time I want to use any feature of 1PW8 even if it is already running on my iPhone. I have been waiting months for a fix - hopefully this update will fix this issue!

I donā€™t believe 1Password 8 is in the Mac App Store, is it? The Safari extension is, but not the main application. On iOS the app performs both roles.

My apology for not being clear about my comment - I was referring to iOS 1PW. I am told by my friendly 1PW support person that it is supposedly imminent but not yet ā€¦ .

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Thatā€™s interesting, my iOS app is allowing me to use FaceID correctly to log in every time without limit. Have you checked all the settings under Security that are pertinent? Check that the biometric option is on, and that the require password after selection is set to Never or a long time. (You can still have it lock after a short time; it just means you need biometrics to unlock again instead of a password.)

Hi Sebby, no, I canā€™t recall what happened/what I did, but something actually is broken, and I was told by the 1PW support person who replied to my initial contact that the 1PW engineers knew about this issue at the time I reported it and have been working on a fix. It is simply taking a VERY long time. Deleting and re-installing does not resolve anything. My iOS 1PW app worked before that perfectly well, and my iPad OS app also works just fine; as does the Mac app. I have had a long correspondence with that support person until very recently when 1PWā€™s supposed ā€˜supportā€™ bot decided to direct my mails elsewhere. Since when no one there responds to me. I used to be a real 1PW proselytiser, now, not so much.

Hmm, sounds like a poor deal, sorry to hear youā€™re having this trouble. I think 1PW is still not without its attractions but Iā€™ll admit that the v8 transition has definitely soured me on it, so I could understand if someone thought it wise to rethink relying on a single party for password management. Hope your issue gets resolved soon.

I just started having this problem with Face ID on my iPhone. 1password 7 is still on the iOS App Store btw, and seems to not have this problem. And has additional feature of being able to reorder fields.

Yes, for better or for worse 1Password 7 is still active and still actively receiving updates. I have not migrated to 1PW 8 yet, preferring to operate under my hard-won perpetual license while they work out the kinks in 1PW8, which is a complete rewrite.

This strongly reminds me of when Apple decided to migrate to an entirely-new code base and editing model with Final Cut Pro. Since they had purchased the application from Macromedia because of its touted ā€œAdobe Premiere killerā€ reputation, they also purchased a third-party code base that did not benefit from their inside knowledge of MacOS and did not conform to their idea of ā€œeasy to use.ā€

Apple published it with many of the highly polished features of Final Cut Pro 7 gone because they were not yet developed for the new platform. For about 5 years every professional was reluctant to touch FCPX, because it was radically different from the program with the same name theyā€™d been using, around which they had integrated workflows and hardware, and accommodated through every minor revision.

I donā€™t know what Iā€™d do today if I were suddenly faced with a FCP7 project once again. Everything that was missing at launch is now at my fingertips, except maybe DAT deck transport (but then again Iā€™ve never tried that!).

It feels like this is where 1Password 8 is todayā€¦and until kinks are worked out and features are redeveloped, Iā€™ll hold on to 1PW7 as long as I can.

Just to be ā€œthat guyā€ - there are a few things I miss from 1P7 - mostly navigation within the app; I have a lot of habits from using 1P before version 8. But 1P8 is otherwise better than 1P7, both on iOS and MacOS. Sorry that @richard2 is having issues, and I hope he gets an update soon. Itā€™s working great for me.

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Hi Doug, yes I agree that the navigation in 1PW7 seemed better.

Re the FaceID issue I am having, here is an extract from the latest (ie, yesterday) support reply I have received from 1PW:
ā€œā€¦ we donā€™t have an update to 1Password 8 for iOS available just yet ā€¦ Our developers have been hard at work on several issues, including the Face ID issue that youā€™re affected by, and weā€™re hoping to release a big update that solves a large collection of issues as soon as the fixes are complete, verified, and have passed internal testing ā€¦ .ā€
The support people have remained positive, but no ETA for the update. While waiting for the update, the suggestion is to go back to 1PW7 on my phone for the time being.

I thought the change in the underlying plumbing for 1PW 8 was supposed to make it easier to proliferate across platforms. To me it seems like the only benefit has been to AgileBitsā€™ bottom line and Windows users.

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So, I know that weā€™ve been through this on another thread (or threads) before, but AgileBits wanted a single codebase for iOS, iPadOS and MacOS (and a second one for Windows and Linux) and started using SwiftUI for this on the Apple platforms. And thatā€™s what theyā€™ve done for the two mobile platforms, but it turned out that SwiftUI was too buggy and missing too many features on MacOS that they had to make a decision, when it was almost too late in version 8 development, to switch back to AppKit on MacOS (which would have been a third platform to maintain) or to use the Electron code that they used on Windows and Linux - which is what they did. I believe the plan is to switch to SwiftUI on Mac as soon as itā€™s possible to do so. (And honestly the Mac version is working fine, at least for me, and itā€™s the iOS version thatā€™s the problem in this thread.)

FWIW, I find the iOS app to be acceptable, if not as refined as 1PW7, but the Mac app, though undoubtedly more functional, to be worse overall. In particular, Universal Autofill isnā€™t the same as the old combination of desktop app and Safari extension of old: the latter was more intelligent and, not being inline, didnā€™t seriously interfere with keyboard navigation in the same way that the new web extension now does. And, yes, theyā€™ve made a good showing with Electron, hat off to them, but really, I canā€™t wait for the SwiftUI or, shudder, even a Catalyst port for the Mac.

Iā€™m glad itā€™s working for you Doug. So I want to ask, and not in an argumentative way: what ā€œkillerā€ feature in v.8 would be a compelling reason to migrate from a standalone 1P7 license to a 1P8 subscription?

You know both apps, so you know what a 1P7 user who is maintaining sync across all platforms (Mac, iOS/iPadOS, Windows) through Dropbox would be giving up. And on the Apple side 1P7 is still being developed and supported for the time being. They pushed out v7.9.8 last week, and though itā€™s harder to track on iOS, I believe that platform has had a couple of updates recently as well.

What would cause my jaw to drop and my eyes to bug out enough to say, I have to do this right now?

Iā€™m not Doug, but IMO the features I very much appreciate in v8 are the SSH agent (which does take a lot of drudgery out of SSH key management and use if you happen to need it) and the ā€œUniversal Autofillā€ which really is universal, working as it does in Terminal, security and iCloud dialogs, and particular applications you require as well as web browsers and web views more generally, based on UI accessibility support in macOS. Now it may be that you simply donā€™t need these features, or they donā€™t add much over a bit of copy-ā€˜nā€™-paste, but I must say that they are very nice when you can use them. The price for these features has been, as I said, a worse experience in the Safari browser, and a much clunkier desktop UI, but they are undeniably nice to have, and if I could somehow have them in v7, I certainly would.

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Thank you for your thoughtful response! I donā€™t personally need the SSH key management at the moment, but it sounds very useful for folks who do need it.

Iā€™ve grown so accustomed to search/copy and paste with 1P7 ā€¦ universal AutoFill really does sound like a nice advance, unequivocally. So thereā€™s one tempting feature.

Itā€™s not enough by itself to push me over the edge, considering the UI trades you mention, but certainly a stepping stone.

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So, first, I have been a subscriber for five years now. I used 1P starting in (I think) 2007 with Dropbox sync, but when I bought an Android phone in 2009 and there was no 1P for Android I switched to Lastpass - where I stayed until Lastpass was sold to LogMeIn (IIRC.) Thatā€™s when I exported my Lastpass data and imported to 1P as a subscription customer. So itā€™s been a long, long time since Iā€™ve used 1P with a standalone license syncing over Dropbox.

The major thing Iā€™ve noticed in 1P8 on Mac: it works in Safari! With every version of 1P up through 7, I discovered that the Safari plugin (or whatever was causing this problem) was not noticing the creation of a password on a new site, changing the password on an existing site, etc., in a reliable way, to the point where my process was (when doing one of those things), open 1Password, manually either create (or edit the existing record); for a new site, paste in the web address, paste in the user ID, create the password in 1P, go back to Safari and paste that in, then make sure that it worked (sometimes it didnā€™t; you know, those sites that require no more than 16 characters, or require a lower case, upper case, numeral, and a symbol, etc.), then back to 1P to either save the record or create a new password, etc. With each new major release Iā€™d test to see if this one was working reliably. 1P8 is the first that does. It auto-fills perfectly every time, it even works for those sites where I have multiple user/pass accounts, and when I make a change it pops up to ask me if I want to save the change, every time.

And things on iOS and iPadOS are also much better with the new extensions from (I think) iOS 15. But those versions have been 1P8 for a while now IIRC.

feature in v.8 would be a compelling reason to migrate from a standalone 1P7 license to a 1P8 subscription?

Iā€™m still running v7 after extensively evaluating v8 and discussing itā€™s critical flaws with themā€¦IMO there are zero compelling features suggesting an upgrade to v8 is either necessary or desired. In factā€¦they have removed several features from v7 to v8 which makes the new version a no go f9r a lot of peopleā€¦theyā€™ve been discussed here before but I can list them again if you want. Unless the critical ones are added which doesnā€™t seem to be in their plansā€¦many folk on their forum including myself have told them point blank that we will go to another product if/when v7 stops working.

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Oh! Iā€™d assumed that the notifications Iā€™d been seeing were attempts to encourage me to upgrade from 7 to 8, so I had been dismissing them. Iā€™ve just updated to that from v7.9.6 - thanks!

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