1PW 8 feature requests: Vault Navigation, Template/editor improvements, Shortcuts integration.
Hi! I'm holding off on fully moving to the new beta for the time being until I decide what to do with my iCloud and Dropbox vaults (on Teams, don't have my own personal/family account, only a standalone perpetual personal license), but there's been a few features I've really wanted over the last couple of years and figured I'd mention them again during this period of considerable changes to the app.
1. Vault Navigation
We provide IT support for several other companies. Within our own 1PW account, we use over 50 different vaults, each dedicated to a specific client we work with. We've also rolled out 1PW to various clients so we're also logged in to the admin accounts for those clients, with their own vault lists. Certain vaults are used daily, others rarely. I think Collections will help a lot with allowing only the most frequently used Vaults to be shown on the sidebar, with the rest more out of the way... However:
I'd love the ability to assign my CMD+0-9 shortcuts to open specific vaults or collections that I specify, or allow me to rearrange the vaults into a non-alphabetic order so that the shortcuts are assigned to the first few. Currently, CMD+1 is All Vaults, subsequent numbers open All Vaults for each individual account, whose order I can't control, so the first few are not even for my own account, and then I eventually have access to my collections. I'd much rather be able to specify CMD+1 as the Private vault within my own Team account, CMD+2-6 for the most-used client vaults within my team, Cmd+0 for All Vaults, and exclude the administration accounts from search altogether.
In addition, I understand that the search allows you to use variables like Tags or Vaults to narrow results - I think this feature will help with getting to the item I need, but the syntax for the search keywords is cumbersome to type, and it would help a lot if it were as short and simple as possible. For example, instead of using =tag:Starter Kit or =vault:Acme, I'd recommend also allowing for something like a:My Company t::Starter Kit v::Acme.
2. Templates
Custom Templates have been in "Beta" for years, and there haven't been any improvements to them since release from what I can tell. In our workflow, we extensively use a copy of the "Membership" template (as it was just about the only one that didn't contain a bunch of uneditable fields that we wouldn't be using) to store all the credentials that we manage for an individual end-user, rather than have a dozen "login" items per user in a Client's vault (John's O365, John's Webmail, John's GSuite, etc). The following improvements would be very much appreciated:
Allow us to create our own templates from scratch, specifying whatever sections and fields we want, rather than having to copy an existing item type that only approximates our use case.
Let us upload our own icon for the template, like we can with Vaults
Right now, if a template is being created, once a section or field has been added there's no way to rearrange them to change their order. If I realize I forgot to add a certain section to the beginning of the template, I have no choice but to delete every other field and section after place I want to add a new section to. Please improve the editor so fields and sections can be added anywhere.
Let us add our own selection drop-down menu fields like you have in various templates
Finally, please allow us to designate sections within our templates to server as login fields, that can be offered as auto-fill suggestions. If I have a section in an item that includes a username field, a password field, and a website, 1PW should be smart enough to realize this is a login, even if it's in a Membership template, or an Email Account template, or a Server template. And each of these "loginnable" sections should be accessible from the browser.
3. Misc.
Agilebits has historically been very enthusiastic each WWDC to quickly work on implementing new APIs into 1PW, such as TouchID, Safari Autofill, and now Safari Extensions. I worry that with the move to a cross-platform solution this type of innovation may be less common, but crossing my fingers that this isn't the case, and I even remain hopeful that if the Mac Catalyst frameworks become more robust, that one day we might once again see 1PW feel like a native Mac app, even if it's just built on top of the iOS app.
Aside from that possibility, something that has been sorely missed on Apple platforms (iOS and soon Mac as well) is support for Shortcuts. As it is, Shortcuts has so much potential for quickly interacting with APIs, websites and apps, yet it doesn't have any method whatsoever for securely storing credentials. It would be so fantastic for native 1PW Shortcut actions to allow us to specify an item from 1PW ahead of time, and then when the shortcut is ran, FaceID would authenticate you, retrieve that item from 1PW and output it so that it can be used within the workflow. It's such a valuable use in a section of iOS that currently is so lacking security wise that I'm amazed it still isn't available.
I'm excited to see what's around the corner once early access for iOS is released, and I really hope the iPad app is given plenty of love. With a Magic Keyboard/trackpad, I use my iPad Pro now more than my Mac, and I feel there's plenty of things that could be refined to better take advantage of the iPad's capabilities in the 1PW app, such as keyboard shortcuts for navigating vaults.
Thank you for reading through all this!
-Ian
