1PW 8 & Electron apps

Electron apps do not use the operating system’s native libraries to generate a UI. Instead, Electron is a framework leveraging Chromium (as in Google Chrome) and a few other technologies to make cross-platform app creation easier and therefore cheaper. An Electron app is simply a standalone webpage.

While it does make certain aspects of cross-platform development much easier, there are some significant drawbacks. Being based on Chromium, Electron apps tend to require a great deal more resources and are less performant than native apps. For instance, 1Password 8 uses twice the RAM on my machine and 10x the CPU at idle. The latter is less of an issue than it might sound, but I am very frequently pushing against my RAM limitations (16GB M1 Air), so the RAM issue is a problem. In my experience, 1PW 8 is also noticeably slower than the last version. It’s a beta, though, so that can and hopefully will change in future builds.

The other problem with Electron is less concrete and is only really apparent if you’re on a Mac. Being a wrapper for a webpage, Electron does not feel like a native app. This affects a great many things, from how preference windows are displayed, to button placement and sizing, to the fact that menus can’t escape the bounds of the window, etc. etc. The most noticeable issue is that scrolling does not at all behave like real Mac apps, which makes the app feel somehow broken. Another thing that feels “cheap” is poor redraw performance when resizing a window. I’m not sure if this is just a Mac issue or if it’s present on all platforms, however.

If you’re on another platform, these issues are far less noticeable (if they’re even noticeable at all), because Linux and Windows have fewer small details and expectations about app behavior. Previously, 1Password has always used a native app, so many users (including myself) are upset at the move to a framework that is near-universally disliked among Mac users.