type in a password manually but have it masked

Hi (again) pathfinder76

You're right that 1Password doesn't obscure anything when you're editing it, only when you view it afterwards.

This is mostly for accuracy purposes so that you can see what you're doing, but also to prevent a false sense of security. For example, if someone was watching over your shoulder, they would still see the character you're entering (because the last character is briefly shown before being obscured) or by seeing what key you tapped on the keyboard. Obscuring inputs might make people think that shoulder-surfing is impossible in that situation and it really isn't. Even when the input isn't shown briefly before being obscured (like entering your iPhone's passcode), it's still understood that if someone can see the keys you tap, the result is the same. Having everything shown in plaintext (while editing) reminds the user to take care about their current surroundings, which is of a greater benefit overall, just like if you were entering your PIN into a credit card terminal or ATM.

Relatedly, we'd recommend generating passwords wherever possible. The password generator's recipe can be changed to accommodate a wide variety of situations. This helps minimise the number of times you might need to manually enter a password into 1Password, and drastically reduces the amount of time that it's shown in plaintext – it's very unlikely anyone shoulder-surfing is going to memorise a password like U!o*X7w8EAoWQC2u in the time between it being generated and you tapping Save.

I hope that goes some way to explaining why 1Password works the way it does, but let me know if you have any questions. :)

— Grey