jl_agilebits

Sorry for the confusion. With 1Password 8, we re-built the entire app from the ground up. We didn't have a working SwiftUI solution that we could just pick up and use - we had to re-architect the entire frontend from the ground up. So when we made the decision to stop working on the SwiftUI app, it was far from being complete.

Thank you for that well-written explanation of your concerns. Your frustrations are shared by many users in this thread, and I'll do my best to pass them forward to the rest of the dev team.

Thank you for letting me know your concerns. Just to clarify: when I said that a SwiftUI version would cause hassle for customers, I was referring to how releasing two separate versions of our app - one in Electron, and one in SwiftUI - would be confusing for non-technical users. I should have phrased that better, my bad.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I'd love to know more about your issues with our current vault implementation in more detail, so I can pass along your feedback to the rest of the development team.

> What gives me pause is how I write regularly asking for separate vaults for trivial passwords and passwords that could lead to financial ruin.

Just to clarify, what solution are you asking for? Do you want a local vault option to store sensitive passwords? Or something else?

The primary issue with having two separate teams for the same platform was not money, it was time. To be clear: we wanted to build a native app in parallel with our cross-platform Electron solution, and we had the developers to do it. But unfortunately, having an additional team that needed to implement the UI for every single new feature was a significant slow-down, and we collectively realized that we could not meet our deadlines nor maintain this long term.

I'm sorry for not being more clear earlier as to why we couldn't support two separate teams for the same platform. Hopefully this clears up any confusion.

> Can you quantify the "needless development churn and hassle for both customers and our support team" in some way?

Sure, happy to elaborate on that! Since we were rebuilding our app from the ground up, it was a significant slow-down on development to create a user interface for both Electron and SwiftUI, requiring two separate teams of platform developers for every feature we needed to implement. There were also concerns by the documentation and support teams that we would need two separate sets of instructions for many common tasks, due to small differences in layout and look between the applications. Eventually, we had to make the tough decision to focus on a single common framework for desktop. This will allow us to ship features across every single platform far quicker than we could before.

> I'd be hopeful that whatever tradeoffs y'all will be making moving to Electron, the "native" feel of the macOS client wouldn't be sacrificed.

We've tried our very best to keep the experience the same so that the transition from 7 to 8 is smooth, and from my point of view 1Password 8 feels right at home on macOS - I especially love our new translucent sidebar. That being said, this is still in an early access stage, so there are bound to be hiccups and UI issues that need to be resolved. Please let us know if you run into any problems or have suggestions on how we can improve. And thank you for being a long-time user!

> I read the paper when it was published, and wasn't great then and it's definitely not great now.

Would you mind elaborating on this?

> The current direction of travel being voluntary means you've just got a bad nose for building security.

Could you elaborate on this?

Hi. I'm a feature developer for 1Password, and I want to clarify a few things. I've already posted this elsewhere, but I've seen multiple threads spreading misinformation that our technical decisions are being driven by VC funding. This could not be farther from the truth. We have been working on these changes long before we received any form of outside investments.

Over the past few years, we've been working on consolidating 1Password's business logic into a single Rust-powered core that could be shared across all our apps. This has many advantages: feature consistency across platforms, faster development cycles, and better security. When building the front-end for the desktop platforms that would take advantage of this new core, Electron suited us perfectly, since we could write our UI code once and make it consistent across Linux, Windows, and Mac. We actually did build a native Mac app initially alongside the cross-platform Electron app, but we eventually decided that having two separate versions of the macOS app (one in Electron, one in SwiftUI) would cause a lot of needless development churn and hassle for both customers and our support team.

I can understand your frustrations about Electron and our subscription-based model, but I hope you find my explanation reasonable. Please stop spreading misinformation.

The original article goes into great detail as to why we're moving away from local vaults.

That being said, we are looking into gauging user interest in self-hosting. Please take a look at our survey [1] if you want to share your thoughts. Hope that helps!

[1] https://survey.1password.com/self-host/

Thank you for pointing me to that thread. I'll make sure to respond there as well.

I did (incorrectly) assume that the parent was talking about Electron, so that's my bad. That being said, our decision to move away from licensing is absolutely not being driven by VC funding, so the parent comment is also spreading misinformation. We were building a subscription-based model all the way back in 2014, and we're phasing out licenses for the host of reasons that were mentioned in the original article.

I'm a feature developer for 1Password, and I want to clarify a few things. I've posted this already in another thread, but there seems to be some misinformation being spread that our technical decisions are being driven by VC funding.

Our decision to built the macOS app in Electron was absolutely not driven by VC money. For the past few years, we've been working on consolidating 1Password's business logic into a single Rust-powered core that could be shared across all our apps. This has many advantages: feature consistency across platforms, faster development cycles, and better security. When building the front-end for the desktop platforms that would take advantage of this new core, Electron suited us perfectly, since we could write our UI code once and make it consistent across Linux, Windows, and Mac. We actually did build a native Mac app initially alongside the cross-platform Electron app, but we eventually decided that having two separate versions of the macOS app (one in Electron, one in SwiftUI) would cause a lot of needless development churn and hassle for both customers and our support team.

I can understand your frustration about Electron, but I hope you find my explanation reasonable. Please stop spreading misinformation.

The short answer is no. People often have misconceptions about Electron apps based on their experiences with a poorly written one. I've had my own fair share of bad experiences with Electron-driven apps. But the way we've utilized Electron is far different than most applications.

Our Electron app is really only a thin client over a Rust-driven backend that handles all our business logic. We only invoke Typescript when we need to render the UI; everything else goes through Rust. We even run some Swift code too, for deep integration with the operating system.

Memory is still an issue with Electron, but we're getting better at reducing the footprint. We've put a lot of work into optimizing this app, so I recommend you give it a shot; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how performant and responsive it is.

> Users don't desire to have the same UI across different OS environments, it's only an app's developers that care about that.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. I personally enjoy having consistent user interfaces across the apps that I use, and there are many other people that would say the same, so I would avoid making broad assumptions. From our perspective, consistent user interfaces are a win-win for both the development team and the majority of end users. That being said, I'll take your feedback into account.

Hi, I work for 1Password. I can understand your frustration that we're phasing out local vaults. Luckily, I have some good news: we're currently running a survey to gauge user interest in self-hosting options. If you're interested, go to https://survey.1password.com/self-host/ and let us know your thoughts. Thanks!

Hi. I'm a features developer for 1Password. You raise a very good question (one that I used to have myself, before I started working here). I would recommend you read our security whitepaper (https://1password.com/files/1Password-White-Paper.pdf) if you want details, but the TL;DR is that we don't know your account password and our servers only store your encrypted information (which we cannot read), and communication is done over HTTPS with an additional layer of encryption via the SRP (Secure Remote Password) protocol. You also might enjoy this blog post: https://blog.1password.com/what-if-1password-gets-hacked/

Hi. I'm a feature developer for 1Password, and I want to clarify a few things. First of all, our decision to built the macOS app in Electron was absolutely not driven by VC money. For the past few years, we've been working on consolidating 1Password's business logic into a single Rust-powered core that could be shared across all our apps. This has many advantages: feature consistency across platforms, faster development cycles, and better security. When building the front-end for the desktop platforms that would take advantage of this new core, Electron suited us perfectly, since we could write our UI code once and make it consistent across Linux, Windows, and Mac. We actually did build a native Mac app initially alongside the cross-platform Electron app, but we eventually decided that having two separate versions of the macOS app (one in Electron, one in SwiftUI) would cause a lot of needless development churn and hassle for both customers and our support team.

I can understand your frustration about Electron, but I hope you find my explanation reasonable. Please stop spreading misinformation.

I think you might have a misunderstanding of how our browser extension works. Just like our desktop app, your password is only in memory if you copy it to the clipboard, fill it in the browser, or reveal it within the app. Your passwords are always stored encrypted on both the desktop app and browser extension, and we make an active effort to keep secrets out of memory. I hope this clarifies things.

- Jackson Lewis, 1Password Developer