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