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Comment by kevindong | Hacker News Reader

LastPass was my first ever password manager and I used for it ~5 years. A few years ago, I got fed up with how sluggish it was (at least, at the time). So I switched over the Bitwarden. Unfortunately, the Bitwarden Safari extension for macOS had a bug where I had unlock my vault every time I wanted to use a credential and that got annoying.

Around the same time I started using Bitwarden, I started at a job with a corporate 1Password subscription for employees. 1Password's UX was so much better than Bitwarden that I switched my personal account over a few months into using 1Password for work.

1Password isn't perfect (e.g. auto-generated passwords can't be autofilled unless you manually convert it to be a 'Login'), but it's by far the best I've used.

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I was going to reply "the problem with 1password is they have no Linux support," but it looks like Linux support actually got added late last year! (Or at least there's an open beta.) https://blog.1password.com/1password-for-linux-beta-is-now-o...

Anyone used both 1password and Bitwarden? I'm using Bitwarden right now, but I dislike the fact that their desktop app is Electron based.

Keepass is another cross-platform option (open source), though the UI on non-windows environments is a bit... crap.

Nontheless, it works, and it works well.

Yeah, the lack of a good Mac client made Keepass untenable for me. I tried several and they all sucked.

A password manager is the one thing which I really need to work well everywhere, because I need access to my passwords everywhere.

For what it's worth KeePassXC these days is very good useability wise and has some awesome features in it

I've been using macpass for a while on osx, and it works pretty well (and looks better than keepassxc): https://macpassapp.org/

Have you tried KeeWeb and AuthPass?

https://keeweb.info/

https://authpass.app/

I'm evaluating StrongBox right now. https://strongboxsafe.com/

Features for MacOS are being actively developed to bring it up to parity with the iOS apps.

Keepass is not a Web first app. There are extensions and workarounds but considering the nature of its file based database it can never be as smooth as solutions like bitwarden and others.

At work we share a Keepass file on a nextcloud instance and it's a giant PITA.

::Personal Opinion Warning::

When it comes to security, smoothness is kinda low on my priority list. I'm fine swapping windows to copy/paste values, or pressing a hotkey.

There are notable advantages to browser integration - in particular not filling on spoofed "lookalike" domains made with visually similar Unicode characters, and not putting passwords into the clipboard where they might be snagged by anything watching the clipboard.

(admittedly, if your system has something malicious monitoring clipboard use you already have big problems)

It's very high on my priority list. I want my employees to want to use a password manager because it's so convenient. A less perfect system that actually gets used adds more security than a more perfect system that no one likes.

Lack of smoothness is what causes many people to ignore these things. So, while you or I may know better, its still a very important aspect if we want more than just the few in the know people to use security tools.

I have also used multiple shared Keepass files at work and the issue isn't a lack of smoothness. There have been multiple instances of sync/dataloss issues where you have to refer to an old version or find someone who has the latest "OK" version of the file.

I love Keepass for personal use, but if you using it for sharing passwords at work then 1Password or Bitwarden are the way to go.

We used Dropbox and it was also a PITA.

Bitwarden is great, haven't used 1Password.

I'm using KeePass + Syncthing to get it around all my devices. Works like a charm! Except for iOS devices...

Please don't anyone take this as a plea to 'improve' the UI of keepass :-) Sometimes "... crap", just works.

Been using kp for years, also the android version. I manually sync my .kdbx files, and all is good.

I won't disagree with you on this. It does work, and WRT security, fewer integrations is sometimes better.

Use KeePassXC rather than the official client. Even on Windows, I found it preferable.

Keeweb is what I use on all platforms. Yeah it's an electron app but it supports natively storing the keepass file in the cloud. Works online or offline and has global autotype.

Works great for me!

https://keeweb.info/

KeePassXC is a modern fork that uses Qt for its UI, and it looks great on all platforms.

"All platforms" does not include Android?

It's there on android too with keepass2android.

My biggest problem with Keepass is that the integrations aren't part of the core project. Want browser integration? Great, pick one (or more depending on browser choices) of multiple projects from pseudonymous/anonymous people, install it and give it access to your password store. Want mobile? Do the same.

Last time I looked at it the very nature of the Keepass ecosystem basically meant that you had a ton of different people with commit privileges to different areas, and no real reason to trust any of them.

This is a valid criticism for sure. I suppose the only truly cross platform options is KeeWeb but you give up some features, mostly on mobile, eg. fingerprint unlock: https://github.com/keeweb/keeweb/issues/1132.

Keepass and all is great. But it doesn't have first class support for anything but passwords.

I'm sure many people will cringe when reading this, but I also save credit cards in my password manager and use it to auto fill when I need it. This unfortunately isn't supported by Keepass et al.

It has templates, which are supported by some implementation but not others. Which also isn't great.

> I'm sure many people will cringe when reading this, but I also save credit cards in my password manager

Why would anyone cringe to read that? They're no more valuable than passwords. In fact, I would think they're less valuable, since really the CC company is on the hook if a number gets stolen.

I don't know. I guess I figured since Keepass and KeepassXC didn't have it, it might be because the most security and privacy conscious don't do it.

Another reason this is helpful is if you lose your wallet and have all the phone numbers and details for your cards stored in a sun cable database. It makes it easy to cancel your cards and order new ones.

I do this too and it's another reason that I use 1Password. I use this functionality a lot too because I very rarely have my wallet on me but I always have my phone.

I store my CC numbers in KeePassXC even though there's no first class support. I put my full name as the username, the number as the password, and the expiration and CVV I put in the comments.

This is what I keep reading, but when I tried that, auto fill didn't work for this.

KeepassXC is another option for multi platform. I use it on mac

KeepassDX for Android (or Keepass2Android)

I was a happy 1Password user, but prefer to use my own hosting for the files & the subscription model makes using your own files very hard (but it's still possible)

I tried BitWarden but the lack of a proper desktop app (where the browser plug-in connects to) is a deal breaker. I don't want to type my master password into my browser.

1Password have had a cli interface for some time. I used to use that on Linux like two years ago.

Since the release of 1PasswordX I hardly ever spend time in the native apps except for iOS.

Pretty sure the 1Password linux app is also Electron.

Bitwarden is fine, especially for $10/yr.

There's a CLI. I honestly just end up using the browser extension...

The link they provided was to the announcement about the app. The app is electron. the CLI is written in Go, so it should feel pretty CLI-like.

I refuse to even think of using 1Password X. It's a security nightmare waiting to happen.

Last year 1Password announced official support for Linux, and released a beta. Surprisingly it wasn't an electron app but proper desktop app.

It's Electron.[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/i3njt3/1password_anno...

> and React for a responsive component-based UI.

Heh. I clearly got too excited to read it properly back when they announced it.

I stand corrected.

1Password's support is not that great on Linux. I couldn't get it working anywhere but on Ubuntu. On all other distros, the extension failed to find the running app.

Personally, I've used 1Password, Bitwarden, and LastPass. I switched from LastPass to Bitwarden a few years ago (use it on android and browsers for the most part), and use 1Password for work. Overall I'd say 1Password has the worst UX of all of them, though it looks "clean". It routinely messes with my settings on update, it's password generator is annoying to work with, and it doesn't pick up new logins I've entered well (eg. if I tell 1password to create a login from this page, it populates nothing while bitwarden sets the name and URL + any username or pwd it thinks it sees).

I could go into more depth but overall Bitwarden has been a great daily driver for the past few years and would recommend to anyone.

I feel like there's something wrong with your setup, then. I've literally never had to use the option in 1Password to create a new login for a page. It prompts me 100% of the time to save the login info when I login to a site and, sometimes, even prompts me to create a login when I go to create an account before I've ever logged in for the first time.

Keep in mind when discussing 1password's UX: all of the apps seem to be different between the platforms. My MacOS experience was much different than it is now on Windows.

The MacOS app is wonderful, but I find the Windows app incredibly annoying to use.

I also switched from Lastpass to 1Password. I did a mildly deep technical investigation into why Lastpass is slow on the browser. I found LastPass delays all page rendering by about 70ms. https://joe.schafer.dev/passing-lastpass/

I had almost the exact same experience. Lastpass was too sluggish for too long and then they jacked up the prices (while also making the free plan actually usable with syncing). I tried Bitwarden but I hated the chrome extension because it didn’t have good autofill which is critical.

Finally switched to 1Password and it has much better autofill + great OTP support even on iOS.

We’ve been using LastPass without real issues of any variety (inc speed) on: Mac, iOS, windows 10. Sharing feature working well.

Same. I've been a 1Password license holder for forever and I was looking at switching away from it because they seem to be moving completely to their subscription service but now the value of the subscription service is looking better and better since I started looking at other options. I can get multi-platform apps for my entire family, with the features I've been using for years, and the cost is cheaper than what I was paying in the past for each individual license on each device.

The only thing keeping me from switching is my past experience with these types of services where, once I make the switch, they remove the standalone license and then raise their prices and I have no alternatives besides dropping the ecosystem entirely or ponying up the ransom. I don't like being in that situation.

I had just posted in the duplicate thread complaining about 1Password (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26154324). I've been a user since 2007 and it seemed to get significantly worse with version 7.

Despite its increasingly major flaws (no exact URL matching, slow UI, no way to trigger a sync), it seems like it is still the best option for someone who wants a native Mac/iOS interface. Though if it keeps getting worse at the same rate, hopefully other options will catch up.

Two main bugs I experience with Lastpass are (1) duplicate entries when things sync up and (2) quick search doesn't enable the copy user / password buttons many times. Annoying workaround is clear the search, and re-search again, that usually brings back the buttons.

Yes! 2 drives me nuts. I switched from BitWarden to LastPass mainly because of the quick search. And having to clear the field and retype is one of those minor bugs that is slowly driving me insane because I hit it 15 times day.

I also changed from LastPass to Bitwarden to to LastPass being noticeably slow. I don't mean to diminish the probably very hard work put into a product with a decent free tier, but it was sluggish enough it only made sense to try an alternative.

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