Please allow PIN unlock in 1P8 Android

FireDragonDoL raises an important feature design question.

Do the requestors of this feature:

(A) require an arbitrary PIN, because perhaps they're trying to keep folks who know their lock screen PIN from getting deeper access to their 1P credentials

or

(B) are satisfied with the lock screen credential (which might be more secure under the hood)? And how many are on Android 11 or higher, meaning the latter could be implemented using Keystore's AUTH_DEVICE_CREDENTIAL, delivering some real security?

My preference:

B, yes (13)

Thank you for your response 1P_Timothy

I remember in a different password manager, when using the fingerprint reader (native), there was the option to "use sign" (the phone sign from the lock screen). That would be sufficient too, I'm not sure if that's of any help, I thought it would be handled natively by the phone.

Either way, appreciated your time, having a response is really valuable, thank you 1password team.

Hi @FireDragonDoL, thanks for sharing your feedback.

You raise a great use case here. I can certainly see the benefit of a PIN unlock option in this situation (and many others raised by folks here).

As long as the account password is unique and random, the Secret Key does most of the heavy lifting. That being said, I understand that typing even a ten character password repeatedly can be a pain on small screens. I've shared your use case and "+1" with the team.

Hi robert1p, these are great questions and we are certainly considering some if not all of them as we discuss implementing PIN unlock on the mobile apps.

At the moment, I don't have answers for any of these questions but I can share some context as to how PIN unlock worked with 1Password 7 for Android.

With 1Passowrd 7, PINs were four numeric characters. You could set a PIN but it did not replace your account password to the same extent as Biometric unlock. With PIN unlock on, you could unlock 1Password with the PIN if the app was locked but still running in the background. If 1Password was removed from Recents, exited completely, the device restarted, the PIN was entered incorrectly enough times and in a few other situations, the account password was required to unlock the app.

If PIN unlock returns to 1Password 8, I'm excited to see how we optimize the feature with a balance between security and usability. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I've passed them along to the team.

Out of curiosity, how would PIN Unlock work?
- After reboot (or logout/login; e.g. Chromebook), I'd want to enter my 1pw before the PIN is automatically activated. [But maybe a Setting would allow users to disable this.]
- After X number of failed attempts, I'd want the PIN deactivated; such that I must enter my 1pw before the PIN is activated again. [User's may want a Setting to control X.]
- Would there be an option to have the PIN timeout? e.g. Y mins/hours/days. i.e. after the timeout, the PIN would be deactivated; after entering my 1pw it would be activated again.
- Would there be a way to quickly select PIN deactivate; i.e. I don't want to wait for the timeout or I'm not using the timeout feature.
- Would there be a minimum PIN length? e.g. 4 or 6? I assume the maximum length would be large; e.g. 20.
- Would setting up the PIN (and/or Watchdog) warn against a poor PIN? e.g. 1111 or 1234
- Would the PIN only be numeric, or can I have a character PIN? e.g. s#8J

I have an interest in the PIN for the Chromebook, since 1PW does not support biometrics on the Chromebook.

Hello! Just adding onto this.
Me and my wife just moved from Lastpass to 1password. We long planned this.

My wife has a screen cover (glass) that essentially makes the fingerprint reader non-functional, unfortunately we can't remove that one since we have two children and the phone falls once per day.

Unfortunately with 1password she will now need to either: change the master password to a shorter, unsafe one, or type a long password every time she uses 1password to insert passwords (error prone).
I already increased the "keep unlocked" time to 30 minutes, but feel uncomfortable doing so.

I'd highly vote for this feature: it could use a PIN, or the phone "sign" to unlock, this would make it straightforward.

Thank you for your assistance.

Hi @sidh, thanks for clarifying that for me.

I'm sorry to say I do not have any information to share regarding when or if PIN unlock will be added to 1Password 8 for Android. Thank you for sharing your interest, I've passed it along to the team.

Hi 1P_Timothy ,

thx for your reply, version 7 is installed on samsung tablet and it is working , but I consider it as a temporary workaround (furthermore newer 1password user facing this problem don´t have this workaround). Do you know if 1password will re-implement PIN option in the next update ?

Hi @sidh, thanks for writing in.

1Password 7 for Android is delisted from the Google Play Store. If you have not previously installed 1Password 7 for Android the app is no longer available. If you have previously installed 1Password 7 for Android, it should still be available through your Google Play app history. If there's an issue finding that there are a few different methods I would be happy to help with.

We do not publish a 1Password 7 for Android APK and we cannot verify the authenticity of the app if it is installed from another source.

Apologies if I misunderstood, has there been an issue with 1Password 7 for Android crashing on your tablet?

EDIT

I just found out that post :

https://1password.community/discussion/134102/download-1passsord-7-apk

that explains how to install previous version (luckily, I'm an old enough 1password user for having a version 7 installed on another android device[1]

So for now, I stick with version 7 until PIN is avalaible for newer version.

[1] but relying on this method to install previous version is not good because a new 1password suscriber in the same situation could only have access to version 8.

I just get a Samsung S7 FE tab (without fingerprint sensor) , before realizing face recognition was a weak authentication method, I tried to enable it on 1password, that made it crash (with the need to re type my looooooong password each time)

I understand version 7.X has the PIN feature, where can I download the APK of the latest 7 version ?

Kind Regards,

Hi djblais, +1 added. Thanks for sharing your experience with us here. At this time, I do not have any updates to share. When we do, I'll make sure that information gets posted here. Thanks again!