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1Password 8 - Non-native feel
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
127 Replies
@Lars & 1P_Ben : But I assume you will not stop working on v8 as it is now?
You just say "Thanks for the continued feedbacks, folks"? You know, you never answer(ed) to general critics about v8. Just referring to an longer post about v8, thats all. And saying that all at AgileBits loves v8 and it will be so great. You just ignore it ... Comments with general critics mostly do not popup at the top of this forum ...Still I feel hurt because I am a user of 1Pwd for many, many years - and the way how you (do not) react to general critics about v8. I accepted to do the same (in the near future) as AgileBits does - kicking 1Pwd v7 to the trash.
Interesting decision and mix of decisions here. You're going to use SwiftUI on iOS? Excellent. You're going to use Electron on Mac? Well, now it doesn't matter what you've done with your iOS version now because they are used together, and Electron on Mac is slower, larger, and generally less reliable.
I starting using 1Password because of its support for the Apple ecosystem. Not iOS, all of it. So, you're going an interesting thing. You're going to make your Apple customers to check other products, just to see. You may be lucky, some will stay, but you are really going to annoy some of your most loyal customers.
As for being "committed to creating top tier user experiences on all of (your) platforms" well, that's nonsense isn't it? On macOS, it's not top tier any more is it?
Oh, I agree with you. But I think that AgileBits strongly dislike making commitments of that kind. I am hoping that behind the scenes they are investigating this option, but very much doubt if they will tell us so unless such a version is at least in alpha, maybe not until a beta.
One of their problems seems to be that SwiftUI is not mature enough, while AppKit is old enough that it might go away in the version after Monterey. At least Electron should work for a long time.
I'm not myself planning to try 1PW8 until actual release, but I do get the impression that some of the current criticism forgets that the current version isn't even a beta yet, it works on the whole but is ugly and has many rough edges.
danco at this stage if they just commit to investigating and building a non-electron version within the next 12-24months, they might actually be able to save a large portion of the customer base from leaving (eg. I've cancelled my renewal, happy to pick it back up if they commit to native in the next 12-24 months)
semaja2 The trouble with using AppKit, is that they could have started that way, but for good reasons decided not to. They could go back to the beginning and create an AppKit version. But that would take a long time and they would be criticised for not producing a Mac 1PW8 version when Linux and Windows versions existed; such criticism has already been made by quite a few people. I think the only choice for AgileBits is to continue work on the Electron version as primary. I hope they are also considering producing an AppKit version as well (or maybe still a SwiftUI version), but I would not expect them to say if they are doing that until a version was close to production.
@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.
SwiftUI isn’t the only other UI framework, AppKit still lives on and is fully supported
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.
