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Comment by ipqk | Hacker News Reader

I've been an avid 1Password user for over 10 years, but since they gone full-throttle targeting the enterprise market, I'm getting more and more annoyed. It's increasingly buggy (right now, it thinks I haven't migrated from 1p7 which causes annoying interstitials that I can't close. Over a month and no fix yet.). They killed standalone vaults. Obvious feature requests (e.g archive an entire vault) sit there for years untouched. The value is increasingly not there anymore for me, and here's hoping I can finally jump ship this fall.

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My biggest worry about passwords by Apple is that I have even less pull when they screw it up. Not that I have a lot of input in 1Password, of course, but I bet if I get loud enough on HN for long enough, I could get the attention of the CEO. Try that with Apple. As a long time user (sufferer) of Screen Time, I am acutely aware of how badly Apple can screw up software, and how long they can let it go unfixed. Tim Cook ain't ever going to hear my pleas.

Might be outweighed by the bigger effects when they do screw something up. Like if their passwords mess up for amazon.com, some big airline, Facebook, etc... the noise will get pretty loud pretty quick.

I know that some people were able to successfully get through to a human/support at Google via HN.

I don't remember seeing those for Apple. Are there examples of anyone failing to get meaningful help from official support but were able to find a successful resolution through HN ?

This is exactly why I use 1Password and not the manager in Chrome, and I won't use Apple Passwords either.

Keychain Access has been there since the beginning of OSX/macOS. It's quietly been storing email and wifi passwords this entire time. Many, before there was an alternative like 1Password, used the app to store other info within as well through secure notes. Passwords in iOS and Safari, along with Keychain sync in iCloud have expanded the keychain functionality over the years and it's been fine for ~25 years or so. I have faith they won't suddenly screw this up and comparisons to less critical stuff like Screen Time aren't really valid here. And sherlocking? I don't think so. When 1Password came out, it was clearly inspired by Keychain Access that had been there for years prior with similar functionality and even user interfaces.

Keychain Access has not been "fine". It's had multiple unaddressed data loss bugs. For example, Keychain lost all passwords from all Keychains after the Catalina update[1] and this wasn't fixed in the next 3 Catalina minor updates. Multiple users reported the issue to Apple and the response was crickets. Even if you restored the passwords, it helpfully deleted them all again. I switched to 1Password and declared Keychain Access a lost cause. I don't think I'll be giving them a second chance here.

[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250722178

That does seem like one Apple fault, that Microsoft does better -- triaging actual bugs.

Apple has devs. Maybe some teams are short-staffed, but they fix things.

What Apple doesn't seem to have is a functional bugfix priority loop that includes customer input and provides feedback.

It starts with the horrendous thing called “Feedback Assistant”. Black hole if I ever saw one.

Depends on how we define "fine," but your own post clarifies that it was "website passwords -- but not app passwords, secure notes, certs, or keys." That's a pretty big difference compared to "all passwords" and seems like it affected a small number of people. In any case, if we're using anecdotes, I haven't had any issues with it so far and it's been decades. Given how 1Password has been getting shittier over time, I've been looking for an alternative, and I for one am going to give this a shot. You can check in with me in a few more decades and ask me if it went okay.

Can you expand more on the Screen Time issue?

I've had a bug where unpausing a particular app requires doing so 2+ times before I can access the app. The bug has persisted on multiple devices for multiple years and it makes for a pretty clunky user experience. That's one example that comes to mind for me.

I have this same issue. I've got to unpause the app multiple times, and wait for upwards of 15 to 30 seconds before the app actually unpauses.

It happens so often for me, I just assumed it was a key feature of how Screen Time worked e.g. 1-click to unpause isn't really a deterrent, but what if unpausing took a random number of clicks to unpause - now that's a deterrent to not unpause.

It doesn't matter how many times you click it, there is a delay before it unpauses. If you click it once it will unpause after about 15-20 seconds. I'm not sure why it does this, it could be syncing with iCloud to also remove the restriction on your phone and iPad or it could be a feature that gives you a short pause to reflect on whether you really do want to continue wasting you life on hacker news.

Anyone get the bug where you can't get away from the Safari tab that's screen timed because anything you type into the address bar gets deleted by another popup?

For me it's completely unfit for purpose:

* It's incompatible with some apps, e.g. Roblox, that are full-screened, and you end up in an annoying loop between the Roblox screen and the request more time screen fighting with each other, with no ability to click anything. My kid has learned how to hit the Option-Command-Escape shortcut to force-kill Roblox using just the keyboard and restart.

* Sometimes Screen Time requests come via Notifications (yay), and sometimes they come via Messages (boo). There doesn't appear to be any logic behind which.

* When they come in via Messages, and I leave Messages.app running for too long, it ends up eating all of the memory on my 32GB M1 Max and forcing me to restart the system.

* Sometimes requests do not come through at all.

* Sometimes the user cannot request more time. Clicking the button does nothing.

* Sometimes multiple requests come through for the same app. Approving one of the requests does not satisfy all of them, you have to approve all of them.

* Requests for websites do not work. Every so often Roblox breaks and results in having to re-download the .dmg. You end up in a loop between approving the request for more time and the website saying the user needs to request more time. I ended up writing a shell script to curl it instead (which requires munging User-Agent because the Roblox download page does not have a direct link to the dmg).

It's clear there are no Apple employees who actually use Screen Time to manage kids time. I can only assume they just let their kids have unlimited access, because trying to actually use Screen Time is absolutely infuriating, and only gets worse over time (e.g. the Notifications vs Messages thing is a recent regression).

It's also worth pointing out that I have absolutely zero issues with Android Family Link. It all Just Works for similar purposes.

Screen time is definitely designed for iPhone/iPad, and macOS integration is a very distant afterthought.

I tried using Screen Time to manage my daughter’s use of my old MBPro, and eventually gave up – for the reasons you list. The issues were just so crippling and obvious that it felt abandoned to me.

Thanks for the background, there definitely seems to be a lot of clunkiness, and as someone who just started using it for IG, I have not experienced these but will keep an eye out. On a side note, I am always surprised how many products clearly haven't been used by the people making them...

> * It's incompatible with some apps, e.g. Roblox

Oh this is a good one I forgot. If my kid is playing Roblox and runs out of time, it goes into that screen loop and is impossible to resolve without at least killing Roblox, and sometimes rebooting the silly machine. That's pretty frustrating for the kid for sure, I ended up just whitelisting Roblox so it never happened.

Ugh, where to start. It has all sorts of failures. In no particular order, off the top of my head:

1. It randomly adds in limits for my kids I didn't even put there. I put in an X hour limit, it puts in an Y hour limit, usually duplicated three or four times. Most commonly for the 'All apps' category. I delete those, a few weeks later they start reappearing. Kid complains, I delete them again, rinse & repeat.

2. Somewhat regularly it loses connection to the kids' ipads and doesn't update the settings I change. Usually it'll eventually connect, but it can take a while.

3. Some devices it just refuses to see. iMac? Sure. MacBook Air? Crickets. Why? Who knows. Everything is running the latest software, both computers have the iCloud account authenticated. Sometimes it decides my son has no devices at all. I don't really bother looking at reports any more.

4. Sometimes I get screen time requests (install a new app, ask for more time, buy something, etc), and sometimes ... nothin. I can watch my kid put the request in, I never get it. Sometimes it's flawless.

5. The requests come in via iMessage now, and this tends to be okay on the phone, but it is very destructive on the MacOS Messages app. The requests almost never completely load, for whatever reason, and just spin. I think only once I saw the requests show up on the MacOS Messages app correctly. Eventually the requests conversation gets too many of them spinning, and they drag down Messages until it beach balls. If I'm lucky, I see that one coming as it gets slower and delete the conversation before it gets far enough to hang.

There are probably some things I'm forgetting. It is the buggiest bit of software from Apple that I've ever used. The only other app that routinely annoys me is Music, because it periodically (every day or so) seems to lose authorization or something, and just refuses to play music. But doesn't say why, doesn't reauthorize or ask to reauthorize, just doesn't play anything. I restart the app and it works for another day. That bug has been around for several years now, on multiple computers.

This is definitely a factor and applies to regular support help as well. I sent 1Password an email several years ago about an issue and got a prompt and helpful response back. It was a much better experience than I would ever expect from Apple (or Google/Microsoft/etc).

I'm not really a fan of 1Password overall though. The product is still fine but has gotten gradually worse over the years and their corporate posture does not inspire any confidence. Consumer apps that focus on Enterprise and are only interested in SaaS revenue almost always follow the same path of endlessly degrading the user experience once they reach a certain point. I haven't seen anything that makes me think they will be an exception, but I give them credit for actually having a real support channel, at least as of a few years ago.

I'm only still on it because of team use, but if Apple's thing supports teams I'm gonna be so happy to get rid of it.

I've been using it for nearly 20 years and it's been going down hill fast for the last 5, but 1Password 8 is an absolute clown car. It hijacks your passkey logins meaning that authenticating with Tailscale for me has gone from a single touch of the TouchID button on my Mac, to 1) click button that says "Unlock 1Password", 2) Click it again because it did fuck all the first time, 3) hit the global hotkey for 1Password, 4) open 1Password via Alfred because the hotkey has decided to stop working again, 5) touch the TouchID button to unlock 1Password, 6) switch back to the browser to find that my Tailscale auth has timed out, 7) back to iTerm to initiate the auth again, 8) if I'm lucky, I can now touch the TouchID button to use my Apple passkey, if I'm not, it's back to step 1.

I'd challenge anyone to name an app that has been ruined more by VC money than 1Password.

Evernote.

Not a bad shout, but no matter how awful it got, I'd argue there never was a good version of Evernote.

The password sharing feature is pretty slick:

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-passwords-iphe6...

I’m with you on 1P. I bought every version starting in 2009, until the constant push to subscribe made me stop. The part their VCs should be afraid of is that switching took about 5 minutes (export + import) and the only change I noticed is that everything is faster. That moat is a trickle of water (I hope it’s water) and they’ve annoyed a lot of the people who used to be telling their friends and family to buy it.

I’m pleased to hear that switching is simple - it has been a major impediment for getting me and my team to switch. We’re currently on 1p as an org and I bought initially back at 6/7. Just changed to 8 reluctantly as I had ‘my’ stuff in my own vault. I had heard that it was not easy

You nailed my 8 step 1P unlock workflow. They've really done a great job standardizing the user experience.

Hah glad I’m not crazy. Used it and loved every version since 3x, but 8 is just so fucking buggy it drives me bananas. It just doesn’t work half the time!

its an apple tool. It will work on Apple products first, and then windows, but with a poorer experience. it may work on chrome, just for 'enterprise' but pretty sure firefox, linux, and android users are going to be ignored.

You’re right on the money but it already works in chromium browsers and windows but none of the others you mentioned.

I have been fighting switching to the SaaS version. Paying a monthly fee for access to my passwords is highway robbery. I do not want/need any of these other "services" they forced upon me. I have trying Apples keychain, but that migration is slow and a total pain in the ass. And it's not even a good replacement.

I'm sure 1Password doesn't care one iota about loosing individual users with attitudes like this. Until the forced to a monthly rent seeking hand in my pocket policy was deployed, I had been a vocal advocate for 1Pass. Now, they're about to loose me altogether

Interesting. Earlier this year I migrated passwords out of 1Password and a few from LastPass and Apple Keychain supported both easily. Just not more complex types of credentials. Every password and website was imported correctly as expected. If not I have yet to notice.

I tried to do the same and failed. The questions were 1) multi-browser support - I use Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera - there is a reason for this and I do not want to authorize some of my browsers everyday to serve passwords, 2) ease of use for family with different level of computer/iOS proficiency amongst them. As of now, they are happily running on 1password, but I will be happy to try again this year and next.

On top of that having to open up system preferences to add a new entry was just insane. Hopefully, this new UI into it will lessen that pain.

> Paying a monthly fee for access to my passwords is highway robber

It would be. Fortunately, 1Password doesn’t do that [1].

You’re paying for an important piece of software to be maintained.

> I'm sure 1Password doesn't care one iota about loosing individual users with attitudes like this

Probably not. Emphasis on attitude.

[1] https://support.1password.com/frozen-account/

This entire assumption that I'm a freeloader is absolute bullshit. I've bought and paid for my copies of 1Password and have even purchased it for others. You can take that freeloader name calling and shove it right back in the place you found it. I'm quite frankly tired of it.

We can have upgrades and working software that gets updates without monthly fees to do it. I also do not need their cloud and only features. They intentionally removed the local vaults specifically to force you to use their cloud. That was the last straw for me.

> assumption that I'm a freeloader

Where did I or OP say this?

> can have upgrades and working software that gets updates without monthly fees to do it

It’s a bad financial model.

> intentionally removed the local vaults

This is a valid disagreement.

people go back and edit their comments silently after being called out all the time around here

Subscriptions may be a 'good financial model' for the business, but are rarely a good financial model for the consumer.

If I am required to pay you monthly for a product there becomes less and less reason for the owner of said product to improve the product. With the hassle that comes with switching password managers (even for myself, I provide three families with this product (my parents, my sisters family)) there is a lot of friction involved with leaving a product that is stagnant that I am paying monthly for.

I was much happier with 1password when i was able to evaluate their new major version, see if any features of it were compelling to me and my extended family and make a decision wether or not it was worth the asking price. Generally speaking a major version wouldn't get huge changes over it's lifetime, maybe some bugfixes, maybe some ui improvements around it's new features (could also be considered bugfixes), any security issues that cropped up. At that point their development staff was more focused on brand new features for the next major version.

I think what we ran into, partially, with 1password is them running out of ideas for their next major version. A password manager, to a consumer, is not a super complicated product that requires a bunch features, a lot of the work is in the encryption and security which isn't really consumer facing.

> We can have upgrades and working software that gets updates without monthly fees to do it.

No, the last twenty years has show us that we can't.

If you want developers to perform ongoing work on their products, you need to accept a model where there's ongoing pay for that work.

> you need to accept a model where there's ongoing pay for that work

Before they switched to subscriptions, it still worked like that: 1Password 4, 1Password 5, 1Password 6 - I paid money each time a new version came out. Sometimes I paid the same day of the release and upgraded immediately. Other times, I may have waited a little bit longer and continued with the version that I had.

Nobody's asking for a free lunch.

They had a model that was ongoing pay for their work. 1password was healthy and happy providing flat fees for major version updates, which were every couple of years. Then some VCs wanted to see more profit so suddenly it's all online, subscription, drop the native clients, and a pivot to enterprise. It got enshittified.

1Password has the most reasonable pricing out of just about any SaaS company. $1/user/month if you're on a family plan. $3/month for individuals. And they provide a great service.

Strongly disagree that they're part of the group of SaaS companies trying to price gouge their users.

Cloud only, and they removed local storage of the vaults. If I'm somewhere that doesn't have internet connectivity, what happens then?

Dislike of SaaS isn't limited to monthly fees, but the lack of features they removed to encourage SaaS adoption

How many passwords are required if you aren’t connecting to the internet? What would you be signing in to?

After the initial login all your passwords are cached locally anyway.

Do you only keep online passwords in your manager? I've got all sorts of things in mine, plenty that I might need without connectivity, such as the door code to that AirBnB or bank account numbers and PINs. Then again, I never would have done that without offline availability...

That's some low quality snark. I have plenty of local things with passwords. One example is encrypted external drives. That's all your snark gets from me on the off chance it's not actually snark. (must me the most I've used the word snark in one go)

> That's some low quality snark.

I'm on your side in all the comments I've read so far (especially the "freeloader" one), but this one is a clear "assume the worst" which isn't fair to GP. Their comment could very well have been a legitimate and innocent question. Of course it could have been a majorly failed attempt at a troll (since the question has great answers) but assuming the worst just drags everything down. IMHO better to give benefit of the doubt, even if only for the other people reading it later.

If you are using a device that previously accessed your vault, it will be cached and accessible. It just won't sync until you regain network connectivity.

Is there an actual guarantee that all passwords will be cached (and not just e.g. the N most recently accessed ones), and that the cache will not expire at some point?

I'm not sure, but I'm also not sure there's a guarantee that my self-hosted password vault won't die in the middle of a busy day.

That failure can be mitigated by having a local backup, though. In general, with local stuff, it's not so much that the guarantees are better, it's that you can dial them in yourself to the level you feel comfortable at.

Same opinion on 1Password's great service. I've found them to be responsive and accessible anytime I've needed them. I'm not seeing all the bugs and issues others are reporting, but I have noticed a couple of odd UI changes lately that feel a bit like a product manager is bored and looking for work to do.

> I have been fighting switching to the SaaS version

I felt that way on principle for a long time, but honestly, on reflection, 1P is probably subscription that is most justifiable. I want to outsource online security to people that know what they are doing. I want that to be a viable business for a long time into the future. And I want their funding model to be such that their interests are aligned with those of their paying users (me).

People can get so irrational when it comes to the cost of software. The same person who'd pay hundreds of dollars for a cleaner, or a gym membership, will swear up and down that 70 bucks a year for an online bodyguard is highway robbery.

> People can get so irrational when it comes to the cost of software. The same person who'd pay hundreds of dollars for a cleaner, or a gym membership, will swear up and down that 70 bucks a year for an online bodyguard is highway robbery.

Often while refusing to work for less than six figures as a SWE, hating on companies for seeking VC funding, dismissing non open-source approaches, and then complaining why there aren't more alternatives :)

I'm not sure a password database is a 'online bodyguard'. I am sure that 1password has been going downhill for a few years now. Getting rid of the ability for me to manage my own vault was the last straw for me. I'm still limping along with 1password7 with a local vault for my 'important/sensitive' passwords but i let keychain manage most of my randomass website passwords. Since I'm primarily in the apple ecosystem this works out for me, I do have some linux in my life too, but since I generally access those linux resources using a mac it's just not much of a problem.

I think this new interface to the password feature in macos will probably put even more of a dent into 1password/bitwarden/etc's consumer business driving them even further into catering to enterprise, it's a pitty, but 'this isn't a product, this a feature'.

If you're using a version of 1Password that's several years old and no longer updated, and also splitting your passwords across two solutions, one of which is not accessible on all your devices, I'm not too surprised that you don't enjoy the experience.

The current version of 1Password is pretty much seamless for me across Linux, Mac, and iPhone. It's more seamless than it ever was before, honestly. It works for my technical needs and my parents' non-technical needs alike, and greatly simplifies tech support for the latter. I would sincerely recommend giving it a shot if you haven't already.

> I'm not sure a password database is a 'online bodyguard'.

If that's all 1P is, why not just spin up an SQL db yourself? Because, of course, that's not all 1P is. It's a database, a GUI (for five OSes on two architectures, plus web), extensions to auto-fill (and recognise new passwords, or changed passwords) on a range of ever-changing browsers / websites, a great deal of security hardening for their software and servers, an office full of people that evaluate and consider how to combat emerging threat models, etc. None of this is technically impossible to handle yourself, but that's an extremely inefficient allocation of most people's time.

Keychain is accessible across all my devices, excepting a couple of local linux servers, but since I only access them through terminals from my mac.. shrug

What initially attracted me to 1password was certainly it's browser integration features but after switching to keychain I find the 1password save login/autofill interfaces to be clunky and jarring... and the input/search interface. Those features would be hard for me to write myself, however given that 1password when they killed local vaults also switched to a resource hogging cross platform framework (electron) for it's 'native apps' at the same time.. well two straws that broke my back in that case.

My current 1password vault probably has a dozen entries, I've considered moving them to just an encrypted (doubly encrypted I guess) note inside keychain for break glass emergencies.

I don't think it's so much "paying for an app" as it is the constant rent seeking. It's not that people don't want to pay for 1Password, it's that we're all so damn tired of every company nickel-and-diming us to death. Can't anything just be a one time purchase anymore?

While 1Password probably wouldn't have gotten as popular as it is, if they started as a SaaS, instead of letting everyone think they could just buy it one time and be done, I doubt anyone would be angry about it.

Not defending any particular company here, but writing software for what is essentially a moving target (OS’s and browser extension APIs) is just simply not “one and done” anymore.

I'm in the exact same situation. I'm still on 7 (the last fully local version) but the cracks are starting to show. I can forgive them for iOS forcing you onto their update treadmill but they've intentionally crippled the Firefox extension for this version too, and it flat doesn't work on windows anymore and it's not like Windows or Firefox are deprecating their APIs all of the time.

Ever since Apple added password management to Safari it’s been clear that 1Password was going to get Sherlocked, the switch to enterprise mashes perfect sense from a corporate perspective. Chrome and Firefox offer the same features, so now every browser is competing too.

I’m finding most of the friction with 1Password I run into is actually Apple competing for autofill in Safari creating two completely different UIs above every form element.

The other issue I have is Safari Home apps not supporting extensions so you can only use Safari’s built in manager. I think that’s fixed in Sequoia.

Apple uses 1Password enterprise internally, so I doubt we’ll see it get completely Sherlocked since enterprise will continue using it.

Passwords.app will be used by folks who can’t be bothered to pay for a password manager, which won’t do much to 1Password’s bottom line.

There’s a lot of prior art like Apple uses Cisco WebEx instead of FaceTime for video collaboration. The products Apple produces are just very different than their enterprise counterparts.

Yeah i'm not sure apple wants to tackle things like 'shared vaults' outside of family sharing.

> clear that 1Password was going to get Sherlocked,

I'm actually of the same opinion as the GP comment, modulo that I'm not ever going to jump ship to an Apple password manager, but I'll point out that 1Password will most certainly not get Sherlocked since they are not Apple-centric and thus Apple would have to (gasp) release a Passwords.app client for Windows and Linux plus a cli and kubernetes operator in order to hold a candle to the reach that 1P has

Passwords.app is coming to windows (iCloud is on Windows already)

> I’m finding most of the friction with 1Password I run into is actually Apple competing for autofill in Safari creating two completely different UIs above every form element.

You know that you can disable Safari's autofill, right? I recommend it if you're using another password manager.

I suspect you won't be satisfied with Apple's offering if you enjoy stable software, unfortunately.

I agree regarding 1pass, but at least it's still firmly trying to solve the password management problem. Apple is trying to solve the vendor lock-in problem (i.e. how can they lock more users in to their platform).

I've been using Apple's password manager for more than a decade; and though the last OS update had a new UI, it still offered the old UI at the same time.

Every other password manager I have tried has had continuous churn, nothing consistent after a couple years.

I have passwords for accounts in my Apple keychain that have survived more than decade and about half a dozen different devices, to internal servers that have been dead for a decade.

The only new thing here is opening it up to more platforms.

My last password manager got sold to some guy in Morocco and my passwords put behind a pay wall, and then lost. Bring on the vendor lock in, I’m so done with all that other shit.

What company was this?

Raivo OTP (written by security researcher Tijme Gommers, who really should know better, or just didn't care) got sold to Mobime (some guy in Morocco as far as I can tell).

I've used Bitwarden for a while now and it has been so better than LastPass or 1Password ever was for me. I never understood the 1Password hype, it was easily the worst experience of any password manager I tried.

Bitwarden gets my vote too.

Besides just working as expected, it importantly supports self-hosting. I don't currently make use of that, but have given it a try and it's great as well.

Having alternatives to the SaaS (currently very reasonably priced) is invaluable.

I miss lastpass auto login. And i wish bitwarden had a merge for duplicate entries. Otherwise, bw is good. I also wish i was able to utilize totp keys like i can with iCloud

I use TOTP keys in bitwarden all the time. Along with passkeys that has recently been added.

Totp is behind a paywall.

https://bitwarden.com/pricing/#:~:text=for%20Organizational%...

Same here. I tried them all several years ago, and BW was the only one that gave me anything like a native experience across all of my wildly varying devices.

For a time 1Password had the best integration and UX across Apple devices of any of the password managers. That has become less and less true over time. Integration issues over the last year have me excited to try Apple's Passwords implementation as a replacement. Bitwarden is on my list as well, but haven't pulled the trigger due to switching costs for a family of five who all use 1password currently.

Even when people were raving about 1Passwords integration I found it inferior to LastPass

I’m still annoyed by the little things — like the fact they switched from a very native looking 1Password toolbar icon in Safari to the ugly full color icon.

https://1password.community/discussion/128524/add-options-to...

Seriously, this is the kind of thing that an intern could knock out in a week. I don’t understand why it hasn’t been addressed.

FWIW, I have had zero issues with 1P version 8.

Is your computer managed by Jamf? I had that 1Password 7 issue because of policy issue

Same here. Hoping I can jump ship before next renewal.

What's new that lets you jump ship now?

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