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Former Member's avatar
Former Member
5 years ago

1Password 8 memory usage vs 1Password 7. AKA, why Electron is no good.

Despite my many, many misgivings about 1Password 8 (and downright anger at the decision to remove local vaults), I decided to give it a shot. The first thing I did was compare resource usage b/w 1Password 7 and 1Password 8 (with a completely empty vault) - and what I found is not very reassuring.

With 1Password 7, with everything open including 1Password Mini and Safari (to load the Safari extension) there are a total of 3 processes loaded - which makes sense considering there are a total of 3 items loaded: 1Password (Safari), 1Password 7, and 1Password Extension Helper.

In this scenario the memory usage is:
1Password (Safari) - 9.5 MB
1Password 7 - 109.7 MB
1Password Extension Helper - 15.1 MB
Total Memory Used - 134.3 MB

Now for a similar scenario for 1Password 8 (main window open, Safari open and 1Password Quick Access enabled), there are total of SEVEN processes loaded.

Memory usage:
1Password - 83.2 MB
1Password Browser Helper - 7.0 MB
1Password Helper - 8.7 MB
1Password (GPU) - 53.7 MB
1Password Helper (Renderer) - 26.5 MB
1Password Helper (Renderer) - 78.2 MB
1Password Safari Web Extension - 68.9 MB
Total Memory Used - 326.2 MB that is 2.5x the amount of memory used by 1P7. And this is for a completely empty vault!

For the next scenario I closed the main 1Password 7 window, but left Safari and 1Password Mini running. As expected, three processes remain as 1Password Mini is essentially running the full 1Password in the background.

Memory Usage:
1Password (Safari) - 9.4 MB
1Password 7 - 51 MB
1Password Extension Helper - 15.1 MB
Total Memory Used - 75.5 MB

And now for 1Password 8, we "only" have 5 processes running in this scenario.

Memory Usage:
1Password - 83.1 MB
1Password Browser Helper - 7.0 MB
1Password Helper - 8.7 MB
1Password (GPU) - 53.2 MB
1Password Safari Web Extension - 68.9 MB
Total Memory Used: 220.9 MB - nearly 3x the amount as 1Password 7, and this is when things are completely idle!

I have heard arguments from the 1P team that the increased memory usage by 1Password 8 is because more things are kept in memory to make things more responsive, and yet 1P8 is very much less responsive that 1P7 - especially in the browser extension which takes a good 3 or 4 sec to load, whereas the 1P7 extension loads almost immediately.

The main culprit is the 1Password (GPU) and the 1Password Helper (Renderer) which are both direct results of moving to Electron. If not for Electron, the main 1Password 8 process is actually using less memory than 1Password 7 - which does show that the backend of 1P8 is more efficient than 1P7. In other words, pretty much all of the additional memory usage is because of Electron.

I know 1P8 is still in early access, and maybe the dev team will be able to pull of a miracle, but I highly doubt it.

1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 11

betas

3 Replies

  • 1P_Ben's avatar
    1P_Ben
    Icon for 1Password Team rank1Password Team
    5 years ago

    Understood. I'm sorry to hear that. We'll be here if you change your mind. Best of luck in your endeavors, and I hope you're able to find something that better meets your needs.

    Ben

  • Former Member's avatar
    Former Member
    5 years ago

    1P_PeterG I actually wouldn't mind continuing to test 1P8, but I'm a standalone license/local vault user. I signed up for a two week trial of 1P.com specifically to play around with the 1P8, but that trial is set to expire in a few days. I thought that maybe, just maybe, if 1P8 really blew my mind I might consider switching from my standalone license to a subscription, but as things stands, there is no compelling reason for me to do that.

    I am (well was...) very happy with 1Password 7 and I have no desire to upload all of my passwords to the 1P cloud. As such, switching to a subscription simply makes no sense for me. Given that the only way you can use 1P8 is via a subscription, this would seem to be the end of the line for me and beta testing it. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, I'm livid with the removal of the iOS share sheet extension in version 7.8 of 1Password for iOS (not to mention that the new iOS extension doesn't support local vaults). As such, I am actively looking at 1Password alternatives. I am sad to say, unless something drastic changes at AgileBits, I won't be a user for much longer.

  • 1P_PeterG's avatar
    1P_PeterG
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    5 years ago

    Hi @"Aaron Pinsker", thanks for your exceptionally detailed feedback here, and the stats about what you've seen with Early Access so far. I have passed this on to our developers in order to address factors that might be contributing to this.

    Regarding the extension, my understanding is that the loading time is bug which affects all web extensions on macOS Safari 14. This issue should be much improved on Safari 15 - I'd be interested to know if that's the case for you.

    In any case, we of course are committed to making the app perform as well as possible, and will continue to make those gains wherever we can. I hope that the Stable release will delight you, and we'll do our best to make it the best password manager you, or anyone, has used.

    Thanks again for taking the time to share this with us. 🙂

    ref: dev/core/core#10387