Issue with 1Password 8 on a new Mac

TidBITS Talk
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I had bought a new MacBook Air to replace my ancient MacBook Pro, and it arrived as I was heading out of town. I left my old MBP behind and stopped by the Apple Store to pickup my new MBA.

As soon as I got to the hotel, I setup my MBA via my iCloud account. All my documents are backed up in iCloud and so is my Desktop. Restoring from iCloud got my Mac about 90% of the way there. Which meant the last 10% will take up the other 90% of the time.

Some things had to be manually setup. My email accounts (even though they’re all in my iPhone and iPad), my messages (you have to go into the iPhone and select to share messages on your new system, and 1Paaword.

I got home, and used my TimeMachine backup to restore my settings. Unfortunately, it overrode setting I had. My new machine got my old machine name. My desktop folder ended up with two copies of everything.

However, the worst was 1Password. 1Password wouldn’t let me log in. It kept telling me I was using the wrong password.

I was using the right password. I could log into 1Password.com, my iPad, my iPhone, and my old MBP. My However, MBA insisted my password was wrong.

I tried deleting and redownloading 1Password, I tried various things in 1Password.com, but nothing worked.

I contacted 1Password. It turns out that there’s a Data folder inside $HOME/Library that had some information in it that prevented me from logging in only on this machine.

One of the issues with MacOS is that removing an app doesn’t necessarily clean things up. In Windows, removing an app has to be done in the Control Panel or System Settings. However, programs track all the folders and files placed on your system in Windows and thoroughly clean it out. That doesn’t happen on the Mac. You can use one of the many app cleaners, but there’s nothing official.

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Windows really isn’t much better.

Yes, there is a centralized uninstaller control panel, but when you click “uninstall” it simply runs an uninstaller app provided by the app vendor. Some vendors have well-written uninstallers. Others do not, and leave behind a mess.

The big thing that Microsoft did is that they seem to have some ability to convince most apps to provide uninstallers. Maybe it’s a mandatory part of using Microsoft’s installer system. Maybe it’s something else.

Nothing Apple couldn’t do with a policy change (e.g. require an uninstaller if you use the Apple installer). Hopefully, they will at some point.

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The Windows installer actually tracks the files being installed. The removal process uses the same catalog to help with removal. Developers can tweak the removal script and most do.

On macOS, almost all program assets are kept in the *.app folder that makes up the program. However, there is still stuff stored in the ~/Library and /Library directories too — especially daemon and login scripts.

I don’t know how iOS and iPadOS handles this, but I have a feeling the installation is cleaner which makes removal cleaner too.

On macOS, it’s really too late to change policy. We’re too use to dragging things into the Applications folder to be able to easily change.

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I believe iOS (and Mac apps from the App Store) create containers for application data. So when you uninstall these (via the Launchpad on macOS), it can just delete the container.

But you’re right that it’s far less formal for Mac apps that don’t come from the App Store.

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Fwiw, 1password’s support site has instructions for how to remove the app completely.

I’m not with a Mac myself, so I can’t check if the installer does or doesn’t include an uninstaller that does all of this for you (but I imagine that 1Password would tell you that on this site if they did.)

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AppDelete is still available and still the best way to delete an app and all it’s associated files.

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“I contacted 1Password. It turns out that there’s a Data folder inside $HOME/Library that had some information in it that prevented me from logging in only on this machine.”

I have the same issue when trying to migrate to 1PW8. Can you give me the name of the data folder to remove ? I have no reply from the support.

Thanks for help.

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As far as I know…

On iPhones and iPads, the rules are very strict: all apps sandbox the user data, and that sandbox is removed when you delete the app. So, it is like you never installed it.

On Windows, anything goes. Apps can put things anywhere they want, and can create registry entries anywhere. It is pretty much impossible to uninstall an app without the installer tracking what it installed. And even then, it doesn’t always work:

  • Apps will refuse to uninstall
  • Apps will uninstall what they first installed but not what was created by updates
  • Apps will uninstall but not the other files (not user files!) that were created while running
  • Apps won’t uninstall any user data

I’ve had cases where an uninstaller won’t work, but you can’t reinstall the app because it says you must uninstall first. And I’ve had cases where the only recourse is to manually clean the app’s entries out of the Registry, which means manually finding and removing thousands of entries.

Macs are in-between. A well behaved modern app creates nothing outside of the .app package except for user files, and those files are confined to the sandbox (container). The only difference between that and an iPhone is that deleting the app doesn’t automatically clean up the sandbox.

Apps which are less modern, and store files outside of the app, are supposed to automatically remove those files when you remove the app. And if they don’t, a responsible vendor will provide an uninstaller (or, an uninstall option in the installer) which will clean it up.

But still, if you want to clean up the user files, you’re on your own.

I’d argue that 1Password’s problem where a bad data file in the Library prevents it from being reinstalled is a bug. But realize, that kind of problem also exists on Windows, and there it is harder to solve because there are no firm standards of where to put things (just conventions) and no standards at all for how things are named.

By the way, I still use AppDelete. I used it today, in fact. But that’s because when I uninstall an app I want it completely gone. But on Windows, I don’t even attempt to completely remove the app, because as I said, cleaning out of the registry is pretty much impossible.

(I’ve long said that the Registry is the worst thing about Windows.)