Why not move to Catalyst?

roustem I disagree. Dashlane in specific didn’t take much time to make it more of a native Mac app. However, it is fully possible to inject AppKit where necessary to bring real settings windows, native messaging, etc. Steve Troughton-Smith has made this pretty evident over the past few years. Not only that, just take a look at iMessage on macOS Big Sur, unless you knew, you would think it’s a native AppKit app. No one has ever said the same of an Electron app.

roustem It's true, preferences/settings dialogues are one of the big areas in which many Catalyst apps seem to fall short on OS X! But the various built-in MacOS apps that use Catalyst, like Messages, all manage to have a proper preferences window; also, Steve Troughton-Smith has put out some amazing examples of how he's been able to leverage various aspects of the Catalyst APIs in order to sand off various rough edges and to get things working in a platform-appropriate way. I'm not saying that it's necessarily ideal or simple, from an engineering standpoint, but then neither is the Electron-based path.

So yeah, lazy Catalyst development would also result in just as sub-par a MacOS experience as lazy Electron development- and you guys are not doing lazy Electron development. That much is clear- you really are trying to make it fit in with the OS. But I really do wonder:
a) how the amount of work involved in going from "lazy Catalyst" to "good Catalyst" compares to the amount of work you're having to do in order to go from "lazy Electron" to "good Electron"; and
b) whether the theoretical ceiling of "Mac-like-ness" is higher for Catalyst than it is for Electron.

And that's not getting into resource usage, security, etc. Of course, this is just more "Monday-morning quarterbacking" from somebody who wasn't involved in the process at all! Just my $0.02. :-)

We spent the last 2 years trying to get the best user experience in 1Password 8.

Should have stuck with a native app, you might have succeeded.

roustem
You say

try to compare both "very first alpha build" of 1Password 8

Do you regard the current early access version of 1PW8 as a very first alpha build?

As someone said in another thread, "early access" can mean anything from an early alpha build to a pre-release that is coming out of beta. very soon. I don't think users are clear as to which 1PW8 is at present.

I think many of the objection vanish if this is the very first alpha build. In that case there is plenty of time for improvements, and even for a change to the UI.

Electron lets users on an older OS use 1PW8, so it should probably be kept as one option. Does SwiftUI not currently provide the needed functionality on newer OS versions? If so, is that likely to change? It does seem that abandoning Electron as far as newer OS version are concerned would be the best option, particularly if Swift UI works.

For example, we got a lot of people upset about the new look of the Preferences window in 1Password 8. Here is how it looks in Dashlane:

We spent the last 2 years trying to get the best user experience in 1Password 8. If anything, this screenshot looks to me like the laziest approach to developing Mac apps.

Thank you for the link, @alex_taffe.

I think it is a good opportunity to compare them and see which one feels at home on Mac.

Off the top of my head, there are a few issues with Catalyst. I am not sure it is possible to implement all features that we want to see in 1Password 8: global keyboard shortcuts, Quick Access, launch services integration, native messaging to keep all browser extensions locked and unlocked with 1Password main app.

If you have a minute, try to compare both "very first alpha build" of 1Password 8 and a "release" of Dashlane catalyst app. I'd love to see what you think!

https://www.cultofmac.com/750203/dashlane-macos-password-manager-native-mac-catalyst-app/

News that just got released