How does one password work with private spaces in the newest Android release?

Hi @dmbulfer. Great question, actually. For anyone not familiar with the Private Space feature introduced with Android 15, you can read about it here.

The way the Private Space works under the hood is by creating a completely separate user on your device. Support for multiple users has existed in different forms since Android 11. What's new in Android 15 is that apps installed as this "secondary" user are now visible in the "primary" user's app launcher and system settings. (This is actually pretty similar to how Samsung's Secure Folder has worked for awhile now.) What this means is that apps that typically use Android APIs to communicate with each other (such as 1Password providing autofill services to Chrome) can do so, but are not allowed to cross this "user" boundary. This OS compartmentalization is the main security feature of Private Space.

So, as you surmised, you can definitely install the 1Password app into the Private Space (or Secure Folder), but autofill will only work with other apps installed in the Private Space. The clipboard is shared between compartments, however, so you could still copy information from an app installed in the Private Space and paste it into an app installed in the "normal" space if you really wanted to.

If I install 1Password both on the primary user and the Secure Folder, will 1Password autofill work in apps that are in Secure Folder too?

Yes, that is correct!

I’m using Android 17 on a Pixel 10a. When I install 1Password into my private space, I’m unable to register it as an autofill provider. The only options seems to be None, Microsoft Authenticator, DuckDuckGo, and Google. It’s curious that 1Password doesn’t appear in this list despite being installed. Any ideas?

Hi ​@stuart95,

Our Android autofill support article mentions that apps installed in private space can’t use the system autofill provider, so 1Password won't appear in that list when installed there. However it does specify Android 15, so I’m not sure whether that limitation carries forwards to more recent Android versions.

A couple of questions to make sure I've got the full picture: is 1Password also installed in your main profile? And are Microsoft Authenticator and DuckDuckGo installed in your main profile, private space, or both?

By reading past messages more carefully, I did find a workaround for this. As mentioned, it seems that you must have 1Password also installed in your main profile (even if you are not setting up any 1P accounts in that installation). Then the 1P installed in the private profile will appear in the list of available password providers. Perhaps this should be better documented somewhere because the app keeps telling the user to setup of autofill but of course can’t complete the action.

Hi ​@stuart95, thanks for sharing the workaround you found. I’ve shared your feedback on the lack of documentation for this with the team to see what improvements we can make moving forwards.