1Password 8 for Mac is here - but still not a macOS application

viswiz I agree with most of your comments - good criticisms of style and substance. I'm wondering when you and I will be kicked off the forum. :-)

The gold standard for Mac apps used to mean consistency for the user. As a user, I knew everything would behave the same in any app on the OS. The developer had the burden: conform to the standards of the platform. In exchange, the developer and user would automatically get all of the OS-provided behavior and features. (Accessibility, appearance and widget chrome, scrolling, ... how much time is AgileBits now spending to re-implement those basics?)

Mostly it's a broad vague sadness, rather than specific anger towards AgileBits. Apple themselves eroded UI/UX consistency.

My disappointment is that AgileBits was a holdout with good behavior, and it has lost that exceptionalism. It made 1Password special, and was one reason I recommended it to others.

My other disappointment is that some user complaints how 1Password 8 doesn't feel right are redirected, told by AgileBits: "This is the best version of 1Password yet!". That's true, though disrespectful of the specific criticisms.

This is the best version of 1Password by many metrics. The core is very good. The skin keeps getting better. Many improvements continue to be made. I'll keep using it and continue to recommend it to others.

It is still the worst version in terms of native macOS UI feel, behavior, and consistency.

I'm torn. The developer in me is excited about the technology used, i. e. a combination of a rust core with a multi platform independent UI. The user side is much more difficult. From early access to the current version it was a long, bumpy road. Some of the most glaring issues like the fake modal used instead of a preferences window were fixed but many issues still exist.
* modals/dialogs: Several dialogs still use the fake, totally out of place X top right of the window. Whenever I see such a dialog it feels like someone is shouting "we don't care about your OS and its UI".
* icons: Although beautifully crafted they just feel a bit out of place on macOS.
* menus: mix of real and custom menus. Context menus in the item list are native whereas all dropdown menus look totally different.
* scroll: no elastic scroll with bounce effect.
* item counts: instead of using the quite common way of putting the item count right next to the item like it was in some of the nightlys we now have an item count at the bottom of the list - one has to scroll to get the count...almost unusable. Another item count is hidden behind the sort icon.
* search: instead of just searching for what was entered and showing the results within the list it now gets really messy. Even if I ignore that it still does not support substring search, something 1PW7 had since the beginning, it's now filtering/sorting by relevance and shows only a part of the results in a dropdown instead of inline. One has to press CMD+Enter to get all results inline. This is a show stopper. You've added filtering but that's hidden in the menus and it doesn't replace search. At least within the German translation search and Find/Filter use the same translation - "Suchen".
* fonts and spacing: in compact mode it's quite close to macOS but it still has some subtile differences that make it feel strange

I love the new look and feel. It's a hell of a lot better than the first betas and I feel right at home with the official non-beta release. Good job, 1P team.

Whether it looks like "a real Mac app" or a Electron app, I could not care less.

I suspect that no matter what they do, people will find something to complain about as long as it's Electron under the hood.

1PW8 may not be an AppKit application, but it is a Mac application, and people who want to fight that war ("Electron apps aren't really Mac apps!") are going to lose to the inevitable march of time.

There was a good discussion of this in https://www.relay.fm/mpu/638 in a chapter about Electron. They discussed the fact that "A Mac App" now means any of a number of different ways that apps can be built. And will be built. It will happen, and it is happening now.

Also not a fan of the browser extension toolbar button being in color rather than monochrome as before.

Indeed. Would it be possible to add an optional monochrome variant?

It's good to hear that AgileBits might use other approaches for the front end in the future.

As I understand it, they initially worked on both an Electron front-end and a native version. I think the native version was SwiftUi, but I am not sure. Anyway, the native version was dropped. I don't think we were ever told why this was. Some people may think it was just to save money, but I am sure I saw some people say that SwiftUI on the Mac was just not mature enough and that other native approaches had their own problems going forward.

Just installed so I don’t have too much of an impression yet. Also feel design seems out of place.

Mainly element and font sizes are far larger than native apps. I understand one can zoom but I think 100% should be close to or the same as the rest of macOS and zoom would be to change such.

Also not a fan of the browser extension toolbar button being in color rather than monochrome as before.

1P_PeterG thanks for the response. I don't disagree that it is a step forward in many ways - and I understand and can see how much work has gone into it (being a software engineer myself). And you and the team can be proud of a lot of things that went to it without any doubt.
It unfortunately doesn't change how I feel about 1PW 8 when interacting with it (and I happen to interact with quick access and the app UI - not the nice rust layer that drives it).

I'm not a fan of the design language in general given it that takes up a lot of space and feels almost clunky to me (even though it's much better when switching to compact). But even then: There is so much space between elements everywhere but no spacing between selections for some reason:

(All lists look like that - could be intentional but it looks wrong to me)

It's not new that 1PW uses a design that doesn't shy away from creating custom UI elements - 1PW 7 did that too. I didn't like it there either but got used to it over time. I really hope that something similar will happen with 1PW 8 too but are quite sure that I'll never reach a point where I like it (and I want to like the UI of software I use a lot).

It's just a bit saddening to see how much work went into something that comes very close but isn't quite there still (and I still don't like). The fact that a UI (1PW 8 iOS beta) that is very similar in terms of design - but still slightly different - feels much better, shows that it's not the design language itself and rather tiny details that make it feel off. I'll try to collect some more examples if I can and share them going forward.

I hope this response was helpful to provide some more context and I'm sorry if the initial post came across aggressive or impolite. It also seems like a lot of people are happy with it - so please feel free and ignore me if I'm the only one that isn't happy yet 😉.

Hi @awn, thanks for letting us know your experience with this. I'll hope to outline here our current commitments as well as what you can expect from us going forward.

I'm sorry but it still feels and looks like a mediocre Electron app to me and far from what meets my bar.

It's always hard to hear this kind of feedback, but we of course respect your views.

From our perspective: we've put a ton of work into 1Password 8, and to speak candidly, we're very proud of it. Personally, I think it looks great, and feel that new features like the SSH agent you mentioned, as well as the extremely powerful Universal Autofill, make this the best 1Password release to date. We've also incorporated a lot of customer feedback along the way, including months of bug fixes, improvements, and additional features as a direct result of feedback here in the forums.

I would be remiss not to note that some features, like Universal Autofill, are actually more deeply integrated with MacOS than ever before, and offer functionality that 1Password 7 doesn't.

Does this mean that this is all we can expect on that end or is there hope for more progress (or even better: a change of course)?

Again, we feel that 1Password 8 is a great step forward. With that said, there are a number of improvements and feature requests that didn't make this general release, but which have been in the works for some time and are still coming down the pipeline. A number of those were sourced from requests by folks in the forums too. You can expect that with each subsequent release, 1Password 8 will improve, much as iterations of 1Password 7 did before it. 😃

As to the question of "a change of course": we won't rule out using other approaches for the front-end UI in the future, because we always want to work with the most advantageous tools available at any given time. We used Electron because we were able to create the best Mac app that we’ve ever had by using a hybrid approach for this current implementation. And that's what we're rolling with for the current version of 1Password. We will keep an eye on various frameworks as they evolve so that we can bring you the best experience possible, too.

Regardless of what language or framework we use, there are certain things that will always be important to us: the app needs to be secure. It needs to be performant. It needs to be intuitive and useful. It needs to look good. And while that last one is of course to some extent subjective, we're aiming for excellence in all aspects of what we provide to you.

If you ultimately don't feel that 1Password 8 is right for you, we understand. But we hope that you'll continue to give it a shot or (even better) let us know what specifically about the app you feel isn't up to your standard, so that we can continue to improve. 👍

Thanks for letting us know how you're feeling about the app so far, and I hope that this has been informative. We really do welcome your feedback on anything you think we could improve - and I hope to hear from you about the specifics. We'd love to impress you with future updates!