Like many Mac users, I was greatly disappointed to read that 1Password is moving to Electron. I firmly believe that Electron is a bad framework for app development, and the 1Password 8 beta does not change this opinion. I’ve compiled a list of issues, as I see them. Some are endemic to Electron, while others are simply stylistic choices by the dev team. I will try to omit complaints that are purely personal preference, such as specific color usage. The lack of rubberband/elastic scrolling is jarring and unpleasant. There isn’t enough visual feedback that the window is out of focus. In particular, the “New Item” toolbar button should fade to a lighter blue when unfocused. Many interactions in the app do not have the animations they should, including list expansions, menu displays, checkbox toggling, and modal dialogue appear/disappear. Unnecessary reliance on modal dialogues is antithetical to native Mac app development. In particular, the “Preferences” and “About” windows should be … well, windows, not modal dialogues. It is unusual for a Mac app to have the “About” page be part of the preferences dialogue. When unfocused, 1PW 8 lacks hover states. In order to copy a field when the app is unfocused, you have to click into the window, then click the field again. 1PW 7 only requires a single click and properly displays hover state when unfocused. 1PW 8 no longer shows the number of items in a tag/category. There is seemingly no longer an easy way to mark or unmark an item as a favorite. The account name at the top of the sidebar has a disclosure triangle in the down position, indicating that clicking it will collapse the sidebar entries for that account. Instead, clicking it brings up a popover menu with various actions. (I don’t know whether this behavior is different when you have more than one account. My point is that this behavior is unusual for this type of UI element.) The app uses almost 2x the memory footprint of 1PW 7 and 10x(!) the idle CPU usage. The app is noticeably slower. Scrolling a long list introduces a delay in displaying icons that is not present in 1PW 7. Additionally, there is flicker and occasional slow loading when changing filters, vaults, and tags. (1PW 7 also has flicker at times, notably when changing login items. It’s far more prominent in 8, however.) There’s too much list padding. With windows of identical dimensions, 1PW 7 shows me 10.5 items; 1PW 8 shows me only 7.5. Are these things ultimately minor? Yeah. Complaining about a preferences window becoming a modal dialogue is about as first-world a problem as you can get. At the same time, I’m paying money for this, and now it feels like I’m going to spend money on a downgrade. 1Password 8 is probably the most native-feeling and best Electron app I’ve used, but that’s like saying the McDonald’s by Disneyland is the best McDonald’s I’ve eaten at. I’ve been a 1Password user for years (I started with 1Password 3) and always held the app up as the only app I unreservedly considered worth a subscription. Now it’s pretty likely I’ll move to something else. 1Password Version: 80200056 Extension Version: Not Provided OS Version: macOS 11.5.1

A

Anonymous

Question

1Password 8 - Non-native feel

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
August 18, 2021
127 replies
4991 views

Like many Mac users, I was greatly disappointed to read that 1Password is moving to Electron. I firmly believe that Electron is a bad framework for app development, and the 1Password 8 beta does not change this opinion. I’ve compiled a list of issues, as I see them. Some are endemic to Electron, while others are simply stylistic choices by the dev team. I will try to omit complaints that are purely personal preference, such as specific color usage.

The lack of rubberband/elastic scrolling is jarring and unpleasant.
There isn’t enough visual feedback that the window is out of focus. In particular, the “New Item” toolbar button should fade to a lighter blue when unfocused.
Many interactions in the app do not have the animations they should, including list expansions, menu displays, checkbox toggling, and modal dialogue appear/disappear.
Unnecessary reliance on modal dialogues is antithetical to native Mac app development. In particular, the “Preferences” and “About” windows should be … well, windows, not modal dialogues.
It is unusual for a Mac app to have the “About” page be part of the preferences dialogue.
When unfocused, 1PW 8 lacks hover states. In order to copy a field when the app is unfocused, you have to click into the window, then click the field again. 1PW 7 only requires a single click and properly displays hover state when unfocused.
1PW 8 no longer shows the number of items in a tag/category.
There is seemingly no longer an easy way to mark or unmark an item as a favorite.
The account name at the top of the sidebar has a disclosure triangle in the down position, indicating that clicking it will collapse the sidebar entries for that account. Instead, clicking it brings up a popover menu with various actions. (I don’t know whether this behavior is different when you have more than one account. My point is that this behavior is unusual for this type of UI element.)
The app uses almost 2x the memory footprint of 1PW 7 and 10x(!) the idle CPU usage.
The app is noticeably slower. Scrolling a long list introduces a delay in displaying icons that is not present in 1PW 7. Additionally, there is flicker and occasional slow loading when changing filters, vaults, and tags. (1PW 7 also has flicker at times, notably when changing login items. It’s far more prominent in 8, however.)
There’s too much list padding. With windows of identical dimensions, 1PW 7 shows me 10.5 items; 1PW 8 shows me only 7.5.

Are these things ultimately minor? Yeah. Complaining about a preferences window becoming a modal dialogue is about as first-world a problem as you can get. At the same time, I’m paying money for this, and now it feels like I’m going to spend money on a downgrade.

1Password 8 is probably the most native-feeling and best Electron app I’ve used, but that’s like saying the McDonald’s by Disneyland is the best McDonald’s I’ve eaten at. I’ve been a 1Password user for years (I started with 1Password 3) and always held the app up as the only app I unreservedly considered worth a subscription. Now it’s pretty likely I’ll move to something else.

1Password Version: 80200056
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 11.5.1

Betas

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Anonymous

Like how hard is it in Electron to be like ifMacOS -> Left for this X? It seems less of a matter that 1Password can't and more an issue that they refuse to out of principal. We will adapt to their design rather than them adapting to the OS design, darn it!

1

1P_Ben

1Password Employee

Our design team is going to take a holistic look at our use of modals vs windows and see if there are areas where we've used one but the other makes more sense. As far as the design of the modals go, we're following the conventions established by Apple. I don't think it would necessarily be difficult to change it, but I'm also not sure there is agreement that we should go against what Apple does in order to have a more Apple feel. 🙃 We'll see. Not much is written in stone.

Ben

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Anonymous

That Home app is majorly inconsistent in itself - some of the modals are iOS style with Cancel and Confirm or similar actions at the top of the window, one specific modal uses the X icon. I'd say it's not a good example of Apple design language. Other Apple Catalyst apps are similarly inconsistent, even within the same app. The home app uses mostly this style:

More traditional desktop apps seem to either use a very minimal preferences modal, or a full traditional preferences window.

An example of a very minimalist Apple preferences modal:

I don't think this is great for more than a few checkboxes though.

1

1P_Ben

1Password Employee

@tomjepp

You're absolutely right that modals are less common on macOS, and where they do exist, the UI isn't entirely consistent. As I say, our design folks are going to take another pass through the app to evaluate where we're using modals, and to see which of those makes sense and which we might consider making a window.

Thanks for the continued feedback on this.

Ben

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Anonymous

I think Reeder for macOS has a rather nice preferences window with a custom style similar to 1Password, but the "X" on the left side of the title bar:

A

Anonymous

One other item for consideration for tweaking — the "New Item" menu. When the app window is smaller, the New Item menu gets cut off and requires scrolling, which isn't immediately apparent (i..e. someone might think they're viewing the entire list, and not know they can scroll to see more options). In previous versions, I believe the New Item menu could extend past the main app window. This also has the effect of making the app feel like a web view.

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Anonymous

@cyberskier I completely agree about the menus. They should extend past the application window. I have heard that it's not possible to do with Electron, but not sure. If so it's yet another reason to abandon the idea of using Electron and move to SwiftUI like a proper Mac app.

D

danco

Remember tht AgileBits started by developing in both SwitUI and Electron, but dropped SwiftUI. I got the impression that this was because SwiftUI was not mature enough to work as wanted, but I could easily be wrong about that.

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Anonymous

SwiftUI isn’t the only other UI framework, AppKit still lives on and is fully supported

A

Anonymous

@cyberskier That's a limitation of Electron. As 1P8 is now a webpage, menus like that cannot extend past the window's borders.

For myself, I've uninstalled 1P8 and will stick with 7 once the "update" comes out. While I actually can finally see some of the improvements version 8 brings, they aren't enough to counter the obvious downgrades.

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