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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
@stanfield I'm a 1Password User on Windows and Android and personally I'm really happy with the Switch to Electron.
There are some things I don't Like but it's still EarlyAccess.Just some quick points where AB has valued User Voice (in my Opinion).
- Psst Sharing
- Dark Mode for Windows
- Better Document Handling
- Better Implementation for Security Questions
- Vault Collections
- More Storage in the 1P Family Plan
- Fastmail Integration / Masked E-Mail
- Faster Rollout vor Features across all Platforms
You are free to choose a Product which suits you better. For me that Product is called 1Password.
@stanfield - what other considerations should you be focused on? None, of course; each person's preferences regarding what is most important in an application will be different. That's why there are plenty of choices out there. We encourage everyone to find the solution that fits their desires best. We hope that will be 1Password, obviously, but we also recognize no one solution will be everyone's preference. :) :+1:
@Lars What other considerations are you referring to that trump the end user experience? This thread is talking about a downgrade of the user experience. Please keep in mind that your end users don't care if this change saves you a few cents. What other considerations should we be so focused on, please enlighten us.
A bad user experience is hard to overcome when you're dealing with a commodity product.
The simple answer there?
Electron apps near universally suck. An app being electron based is a near certain indicator it will be poor to use and suck up system resources.
While 1P8 is a much better electron implementation than most, you’re still replacing a first class native app with one that doesn’t fit macOS’s UI design.
That’s why there’s such a backlash. If you’d never had a really good native app at all, people would care a lot less.
What I will confess to not understanding is a perspective that places the requirement of specific local app UI toolkit seemingly above all other considerations, but that's the great thing: everyone gets to choose.
The reasoning for this is pretty simple - it's a quick and simple litmus test for how the app will feel when you use it. If it uses native UI (even with custom widgets), it's going to feel like an app that belongs on the platform. If it uses Electron, it's going to feel 'wrong'.
The worst Electron apps feel like a web page pretending to be an app - because that's what they are. Generally using Electron usually means that the app is largely the same on every platform - so it tends to feel 'wrong' everywhere, or development tends to favour a platform for feel. Additionally, by having to implement their own widget set, each app that does it has unique quirks - and the widgets that normally get wide reuse like text boxes, checkboxes or on/off switch components never match the platform's expectations.
For 1Password 8 it's not as bad as the web page in a window feel, but it's not a Mac or Windows app. It has some Mac and Windows specific features, but it is a cross-platform app with a UI design that does not match any of the platforms it lives on - even simple text boxes feel 'wrong' - and they feel wrong on every platform.
Sadly, 1Password was pretty much the last password manager vendor actually doing native apps for desktop/laptop platforms, and that's definitely over - as staff posting on these forums don't even seem to see the issues as issues.
