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Comment by jmuguy | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'll be the only 1Password fanboy in here. I use 1pw personally and LastPass for work (shared between team of a dozen or so technicians).

To compare the two - 1pw is basically one of my favorite programs. LastPass is um... adequate? We have a lot of items in our LastPass vault and anytime we search it, add or change an item there is a 5-10 second lag. This according to LastPass support is unavoidable. Something to do with each item being individually encrypted/decrypted each time.

In anycase if 1Password for Teams is half as good 1Password I assume it will blow LastPass out of the water. And my experience with the Agilebits team gives me confidence that they'll work on actually improving the product instead of just looking for an exit.

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1PW is without a doubt one of the nicest iOS and Mac programs I have ever used. It is gorgeous and just works. Well worth however much I spent on it.

Unfortunately 1pw is absolutely terrible on Android. So I was forced to switch to Lastpass even though 1pw is generally superior because I need something that works on all my devices.

Hi!

What were the issues you had with the Android application?

Feedback is most certainly welcome here so we can try to focus our attention on the areas that are seeing the most sad faces from our users.

Thanks!

Kyle

AgileBits

I recently switched to Android from ios and literally everything on 1password Android is vastly inferior to the ios version. It's like the ios app is developed by a crack team of experts while the Android app is developed by a part time intern working for free.

With respect to our Android developers they have an uphill climb to catch up to iOS. Our iOS application has been in development for something like 4 years now, and several years before that as a previous incarnation (version 4 was a complete rewrite).

Our iOS application also shares a great deal of underpinnings with Mac. That means when our Mac team implements something super great our iOS team gets some of that grunt work for free. Then it becomes an interface deal in many cases which may not be easy at all but at least some of the work was done.

The Android team, well, they have to implement everything themselves and it's simply going to take time. Combine this with UI changes and stuff that mean we have to rewrite existing things to match up with that and it just becomes very overwhelming sometimes. I work on our iOS application and it's incredible the amount of stuff you can do in a short period of time because groundwork has been laid for years. I don't envy our Android developers because they have none of that to work with. I'm sure it's both overwhelming and exhilarating for them.

I guess that's a long answer but really, it's simply going to take some time for our Android developers to catch up. I know it's tough as a user to see one so far ahead of the other but I hope the above information puts some of it into perspective. They'll get there :)

Thanks!

Kyle

AgileBits

Hi Kyle, thank you for participating in this conversation. I am sure everyone here appreciates it.

It is true that as an android dev one has to implement many things themselves. It's an unpleasant part of developing for Android that Google does very little to address.

The simplest approach you could take would be to copy and implement the design patterns presented in Google's material design guidelines. Yes, it is unfortunate they are guidelines and not SDK. However, there are enough patterns to provide a superior experience to the jumbled mess of an application that it is right now.

https://www.google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduct...

- Use the FAB for "search" since it is the most frequent user action. - Use the navigation drawer https://www.google.com/design/spec/patterns/navigation-drawe...

This is just a 1 minute recommendation and of course open to argument. However, simply redoing the app in a generic style adhering to these guidelines would be a drastic improvement.

Thank you in advance for doing an android app in the first place.

Happy to participate. I read Hacker News regularly myself so getting a chance to jump in and be involved is always fun :)

A design overhaul is definitely in the works. I think, but can't confirm, that it will alleviate some of your concerns. I don't have a time frame for it but given we're saying that the 1Password for Teams beta is going to last about 3 months we'd like to have Android ready to go for that launch as well. They're hard at work on making it happen now.

Thanks for the feedback! We're always happy to receive it and pass it along. It's how we drive development in a lot of cases. Teams came about from requests from our users. Multiple vaults came about from requests from our users. A lot of it is driven by user feedback so don't be afraid to send it in. No promises everything will be done but the more people that say they want a particular feature the higher that gets bumped up the priority list.

Kyle

AgileBits

Some of it is UI, which may be a little superficial but it doesn't "feel" like an Android app.

I'd also love to see it do something like Facebook Messenger where it provides a button on top of whatever active app is currently running.

I suspect you'll be happy with our future updates. It should feel more like an Android application. There's a small preview you can find here:

https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/05/28/fingerprint-unlock-com...

That's fairly old, from May, but it does give a bit of a tease if you're familiar with Android and the look and feel of things.

Kyle

AgileBits

Fingerprint unlock is good. Material is good. But this part is important: Get search into the toolbar, and out of the menu.

Specific Android issues: - The Android keyboard doesn't autofill fields - in ios I could use the share extension and it would attempt to autofill - the search is hidden behind a menu and isn't present at all in the opening screen - have to go into a category - search is broken - doesn't return a list of searched for items as the ios one does, it displays suggestions instead - if I click on a search result and go back to select a search result I have to search again - design is dated. The ios app looks great the Android one looks really old and dated even compared against last years apps

Overall seems to be a low effort app. Not worth the money I paid for it. Considering switching to an alternative which is more Android friendly despite having laid almost a hundred bucks for ios and Mac apps.

Sorry to hear that you're unhappy with it. I think you'll be happy with the progress when you see the next updates. There's some work being done to modernize the interface and some of your list will be tackled by that. I would encourage you to take a look at my other comment in this particular tree of comments about Android. It might offer some perspective, not that it's an excuse but it explains things a bit more and might just help in understanding.

We really do want everyone to love our Android application. Personally, I feel they've made great strides given the time they've had. It's just a matter of time and our Android application will be right up there with our iOS application. We have some super smart people working on it and they're very passionate about what they do. I can't help but be inspired by a group of people who fight tooth and nail to catch up to a product that's much older (our iOS application).

I showed your comment to our Android developers so they've seen what you're requesting :)

Thanks!

Kyle

AgileBits

Thanks for the detailed reply. I do like 1Pw - it is so very well thought out on mac and ios that I expected something similar on the android side too. Good to see it is being worked on and will hopefully become a first class app alongside your other apps.

My Pleasure. I certainly hope it gets there sooner rather than later but it will get there :)

Kyle

AgileBits

While you are taking feedback, I would love for 1password to be able to add ssh keys and other important security bits of info.

I use secure notes for that, personally.

I was thinking tighter integration than that.

Imagine if ssh private keys could be stored inside 1Password. It would become a ssh-agent replacement.

No real reason to leave ssh private keys scattered on different user directories anymore.

I actually had this idea back when I first started at AgileBits and had to really start maintaining ssh keys for work purposes. Prior to that it was mostly just side projects and my own personal stuff.

Maybe we'll have to kick this one in the pants and see what we can do. No promises of course but I'll be passing this along again since I have a personal investment in that idea :)

Kyle

AgileBits

I'm the technical head for our cloud business so I've got some pretty specific ideas on how to make this more useful from a day to day operational standpoint (multi-tenant infra support has lots of interesting use cases).

Feel free to ask if you want more input.

Sounds good. You're welcome to send any thoughts to me privately. My email is my first name (see the username here and remove the first two characters, ag is our shorthand for AgileBits). Then @ company name .com.

Having some information I could make sure is in our bug reporter as a feature request would certainly be nice to have around in case we did implement this at some point in the future.

Kyle

AgileBits

Hi - have you tried Keeper? We have 9M users - and as a benefit for someone like you we're platform-wide with native apps across all OS's, devices and browsers - our users love our Android experience. www.keepersecurity.com

Thanks for the kind words! We don't plan to disappoint. :)

Rob

AgileBits

Keeper Security encrypts records with individual keys. Doesn't have the 5/10 sec lag.

interesting post!

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