Feature request: Notes app functionality
Hey all,
I currently use Telegram's Saved Messages function as a notes app, but I recently learned that the Saved Messages feature isn't end-to-end encrypted. I'm looking for an alternative that allows me to keep notes, files, and other data easily accessible from multiple devices securely with minimal risk of data loss—Signal has a bad habit of losing message history, so that's not ideal for me. I'm also looking to not have to purchase yet another subscription.
1Password already has some notes storage functionality with Secure Notes, which is great. But I'd need a couple of features added to make 1Password's Secure Notes my replacement for Telegram's Saved Messages.
- The ability to import messages from Telegram (as well as Signal and other chat apps, if possible) as Secure Notes, and possibly the ability to save chat history as a special kind of Secure Note which is formatted like a chat log or transcript of a conversation.
I very much don't want to have to copy and paste each message into 1P; I know that importing message history as individual notes would likely still leave me to sort each new note out and combine ones that are related into one Secure Note (actually, that's another feature idea) but I'm willing to do that work because I'm almost certain it would be less time-consuming. One thing that would work in 1P's favor here is that Telegram messages use Markdown for formatting, which I believe is the same formatting that 1P uses for Secure Notes, so that would hopefully be fairly easy to preserve through importing. Media from these chats would also ideally be imported. Adding popular notes apps and cloud services as an export option for 1Password would be great for interoperability if I do decide to use a dedicated notes app in the future, as well. - Better handling of media files (images, audio, video, maybe things like 3D models and code if you want to get fancy) within 1Password.
It's great that you can upload files to a Secure Note, but viewing them from 1Password itself is a little clunky. On Android, viewing those files without downloading them opens them in another app, which is workable but not ideal. On Windows, there seems to be no way to view a file without downloading it first. I don't always want to download every file I put in my notes; often times they're meant to be a quick reference that I can scroll to when I need them and then scroll away. Having files display inline within their field in a 1Password item, with images and videos expanding if you click on them, would be a far better user experience. - The ability to combine multiple items into one.
This is the idea I came up with in point 1. If I could select multiple 1Password items (ideally different kinds of items would be supported, but I could understand limiting it to only the same kind of item) and combine them into the first item I selected, but adds a new section for each additional item that is named after the item and contains each field from the item, that would be very helpful for organizing the contents of my vaults.
For example, if I had two Secure Notes named "Shopping list", one from yesterday and the other from today, it would be great if I could long-press on (in Android) or click the icon of (in Windows) the older one, then press or click on the newer one, hit a button labeled "Combine", have an Edit view of the older Secure Note come up with the original content at the top and at the bottom have a new section titled "Shopping list" with the content from the newer Secure Note, and once I hit Save, those two items are combined, and the old item is deleted. Long-pressing (in Android) or right-clicking (in Windows) on the new "Shopping list" section could present an option to Split, which if selected opens an edit view of a new Secure Note with the name and content of the section.
It would also be fun to be able to set an application background using a picture I upload, as I can do on Telegram, but that's not essential. If that was implemented, having the ability to set a default background and then a background for each Vault would be a very nice way to be able to tell at a glance which Vault I have selected at any given time.
I think those are all the features I would need to make 1Password my new notes app. I understand that this all may be outside of the scope of a password manager, but I would point out that the Secure Note type of item is a couple of steps in this direction already, and that a password manager that can also act as a secure, versatile, and easy-to-use notes app is a more compelling product than competitors that only manage passwords while also attracting people in the market for a notes app who otherwise wouldn't have considered buying a 1Password subscription. I think there's value there both for 1Password and for 1P users.
I'll update this thread if I have any more ideas for notes app-related features I'd like to see, and respond if anyone suggests features that I think are a great idea for this functionality. Thanks!