What is the design/thought process behind reverting to the old mobile search bar location?
I guess I'm a bit confused as to why it was changed to appease knee-jerk complaints from three years ago? The blog says this is to "make it easier to search quickly" (blatantly false) and to "align with other devices, creating a consistent experience."
I guess the clarification I'm looking for here is how 1Password are justifying this as a good design choice now with the market and modern design going the other direction. Look at any app with AI, Arc Browser, Arc Search, Raycast, iOS spotlight, etc.. Modern ui/ux design is moving to search being the main way to interact as it's faster and easier for everyone. Three years ago, with the release of 1Password 8, the search moving to an easily reachable tab was a great design/ux choice. The same can't be true of the regression now.
The search bar at top is a much smaller target to tap on and it's just harder to reach, especially with the oversized phones that seem to be getting larger each year. Also, now with there being a search bar on each tab, the experience gets only more confusing. For example, if I search for something in one tab, open it and navigate somewhere else, I need to remember what tab I had the search on. If I forget what tab I was on, it's possible to search and open the same item on a new tab. This is possible with all three tabs on mobile now, meaning if that happens, I can easily reach a state of the app where I'm trying to swap between 2 or more tabs and it looks as if nothing is happening and the app is broken.
That doesn't sound like it's "easier to search quickly" to me. Having a dedicated place and button that is always 1 reachable tap away sounds like a better experience to me. It seems to me as if 1Password has some ux/ui designers or managers with differing preferences now. That whoever is making these decisions now, maybe uses Android. Android seems to have missed the boat on making things reachable and accessible on a big screen, instead forcing the user to treat their phone as a tablet. Meanwhile modern design continues to move more towards the bottom tab bar being the focus and even beyond mobile, search is now being treated as a first class citizen everywhere other than 1Password. I had even mentioned how important the search tab was in some of your surveys, saying how all of the other tabs are mostly irrelevant and how search is the only thing I use, to no avail it appears. I've even asked friends and family that I've recommended 1Password to and they all primarily use the search tab as well.
I'd really appreciate hearing some thoughts behind all of this beyond just "we had complaints three years ago."