Hands on: 1Password 7.3 for Mac recognizes apps and introduces drag and drop login

AppleInsider

The latest version of password manager 1Password 7.3 concentrates on its Mac version's menubar app which now lets you drag passwords and login details into websites or also into supported apps on your Mac.

Password manager 1Password is a service and a series of apps for Mac, iOS, Windows and Android, which remembers your login details and also creates new, strong passwords as you need them. The newly updated 1Password 7.3 for Mac concentrates chiefly on its menubar companion app, 1Password Mini, which has been revamped for quicker access.

Previously, 1Password Mini was for use in websites and was only made a system-wide menubar app so that you could use it as easily with Safari, Chrome, Firefox or any other browser. Recently, though, the 1Password Mini app has been made useful within other apps.

We created an account on Discord's website but 1Password recognizes the app, too

In the previous version to this, 1Password Mini gained the ability to fill in your login details for apps such as ones in the Adobe Creative Cloud range. Now it's added others including those from the Omni Group. If you are in an app such as the OmniFocus To Do one, and you press the keystroke to launch 1Password Mini, it recognizes where you are and offers you relevant details.

Whereas with Apple's Keychain, you might have the login details for the app from when you signed up on its website, but getting those out into the app itself is a chore. Now 1Password 7.3 offers you the right login details for an app automatically.

Logging into an app or website will always be fastest using 1Password Mini and keystrokes because it automatically fills in the details. However, not all websites play nice with password managers and both to deal with them and just to give you another way of doing it, you can now drag login details from 1Password Mini and drop them onto the site or app.

You can now drag a login straight from 1Password's menubar app into a website

It would be good if you could drag both username and password at the same time, but this feature is especially useful when you have multiple accounts on the same service and 1Password can't know which one you need now.

This intelligent selection of what you're most likely to want appears to be done every time you open 1Password Mini, however. In the majority of cases that's going to be right, but previously if you went right back into 1Password Mini, it would open to the list of logins you last saw. That is sometimes more convenient if you're working through a series of logins.

To mitigate that, the new 1Password Mini app adds the ability to search tags. The main 1Password 7.3 app lists tags in a similar way to macOS Mojave's Finder windows, a sometimes endless column of them. So the fact that a regular search in the Mini app will now also find tags is useful.

The company now sells 1Password as a subscription service with different tiers and combinations. For an individual, you can have 1Password for Mac, iOS, Android and PC for $2.99 per month. Or you can use various family and teams tiers which let you share passwords in a group.

mplsp

I started using 1Password years ago when Apple ditched MobileMe keychain syncing. It’s a great program and much more powerful than keychain.

I wish it would coordinate better with Keychain though. Up until Apple allowed password managers to better integrate with iOS I was using keychain more often simply because it worked so much better with my iPad and iPhone. Now I essentially have 2 parallel password files.

ihatescreennames

I wish they hadn’t gone the subscription route. I used to recommend 1Password to people all the time. It was a little bit of a tough sell because many didn’t want to shell out $50 for, well, any software. Once I showed them how it worked for me it became easier but not always. Now that 1Password needs a monthly payment people balk even more, especially since Keychain does the job for most people. Keep in mind, it isn’t uncommon for me to hear people complain about paying $1 a month for 50GB of iCloud storage, so $3 is just crazy talk to them.

soli

MplsP said:

I started using 1Password years ago when Apple ditched MobileMe keychain syncing. It’s a great program and much more powerful than keychain.

I wish it would coordinate better with Keychain though. Up until Apple allowed password managers to better integrate with iOS I was using keychain more often simply because it worked so much better with my iPad and iPhone. Now I essentially have 2 parallel password files.

I've made countless recommendations over the years that have been implemented (I'm sure I wasn't neither the only one or first to make the suggestion), but one thing they haven't implemented is an areas for recording your health in detail with expiry dates that let you know from the app with a notification and/or a calendar entry.

For example, keeping a detailed list of a tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis shot, which will remind me when 10 years is about to expire. I've made my own detailed system in the Secure Notes section, but a pre-set category would made this easier.

I'd also like to be able to move Sections around, not just the label and items within a section. I buy add new vehicles and other pertinent data in Secure Notes that require listed a lot of detail, but they keep being placed below one another further down which adds time to find the newer items. Not a huge deal, but still a level of inconvenience, and breaking them all out individually for that Secure Note would clutter up that section too much.

ihatescreennames said:

I wish they hadn’t gone the subscription route. I used to recommend 1Password to people all the time. It was a little bit of a tough sell because many didn’t want to shell out $50 for, well, any software. Once I showed them how it worked for me it became easier but not always. Now that 1Password needs a monthly payment people balk even more, especially since Keychain does the job for most people. Keep in mind, it isn’t uncommon for me to hear people complain about paying $1 a month for 50GB of iCloud storage, so $3 is just crazy talk to them.

I'm fine with it and it's now less costly for me at $1 per month. As the one that has to deal with everyone's technical issues anyway, I created a family account and have put pretty much everyone on my family plan. I have them send me $12 for the year via Apple Pay Cash and help them set it up. It's also easier for me to reset their master password remotely if they forget 🤦‍♂️ and to have shared vaults for the items that are used between one of more family members. I remember it being a bit overwhelming when I first started using 1P, but Keychain was (and is) far too anemic for my needs.

My system was to have to input a single name, username, and password for a website or app per day. This prevents them from being overwhelmed by that initial and helps establish facilities with the app. After that is effectively complete, then it's changing a single password per day to something complex and secure using their password generator. After that it's cleaning up a single login entry per day with stuff like attached email, credit card, etc. as noted in the accounts settings section of the app, as well, as secret questions and answers, and other data that could be pertinent in the login entry or other areas of the app, like added credit card and bank account data. Optional items for the more intrepid are cleaning up the URL that is auto-added, but that's more for visual effect, or wireless router access details, as well as the .config download as seen in AIrPort routers.

lkrupp

ihatescreennames said:

I wish they hadn’t gone the subscription route. I used to recommend 1Password to people all the time. It was a little bit of a tough sell because many didn’t want to shell out $50 for, well, any software. Once I showed them how it worked for me it became easier but not always. Now that 1Password needs a monthly payment people balk even more, especially since Keychain does the job for most people. Keep in mind, it isn’t uncommon for me to hear people complain about paying $1 a month for 50GB of iCloud storage, so $3 is just crazy talk to them.

Then let ‘em get hacked. Who cares about the cheaptards? They are of no use to anyone, especially developers. They’re all over the Apple discussion forums. “I want an app that will run my life for me and do everything I want it to immediately and to my satisfaction... but it has to be free or it’s a no-go. I paid $4000 for my MacBook but I won’t pay a dime for any software to run on it.”

I subscribe to a number of what I consider mission critical apps and 1Password 7 is one of them, along with Office 365 and Quicken.

vmarks

Subscription fatigue is real. I was happy paying for it as a standalone license, but it's a shame that they've made that option either unavailable or severely hidden. I want to own the license, not rent it. I want to store my vault where I'm comfortable with it, not on any password manager's server. I'm staying with 1Password 6 for now. I am not interested in software as a subscription, not when MS does it, not when Adobe does it, not when Intuit does it, and not when Agilebits does it.

edited May 2019

soli

vmarks said:

I want to store my vault where I'm comfortable with it, not on any password manager's server.

You don't have to store or sync your vault(s) through my.1password.com. I still using one of the sync methods they've offered long before going to a subscitopn model because it adds an additional layer of protection.

I'm not completely free from syncing to my.1password.com, but it's only used for a handful of shared logins which are mostly comprised of my family's streaming media logins, not anything that needs the highest level of security.

maestro64

vmarks said:

Subscription fatigue is real. I was happy paying for it as a standalone license, but it's a shame that they've made that option either unavailable or severely hidden. I want to own the license, not rent it. I want to store my vault where I'm comfortable with it, not on any password manager's server. I'm staying with 1Password 6 for now. I am not interested in software as a subscription, not when MS does it, not when Adobe does it, not when Intuit does it, and not when Agilebits does it.

Victor, i am with you, I will not update due to the subscription service and the fact I you can not sync it but through the subscription. I personally only sync via my home WiFi, i am not interested in placing my person login on something else's server.

rayz2016

lkrupp said:

ihatescreennames said:

I wish they hadn’t gone the subscription route. I used to recommend 1Password to people all the time. It was a little bit of a tough sell because many didn’t want to shell out $50 for, well, any software. Once I showed them how it worked for me it became easier but not always. Now that 1Password needs a monthly payment people balk even more, especially since Keychain does the job for most people. Keep in mind, it isn’t uncommon for me to hear people complain about paying $1 a month for 50GB of iCloud storage, so $3 is just crazy talk to them.

Then let ‘em get hacked. Who cares about the cheaptards? They are of no use to anyone, especially developers. They’re all over the Apple discussion forums. “I want an app that will run my life for me and do everything I want it to immediately and to my satisfaction... but it has to be free or it’s a no-go. I paid $4000 for my MacBook but I won’t pay a dime for any software to run on it.”

I subscribe to a number of what I consider mission critical apps and 1Password 7 is one of them, along with Office 365 and Quicken.

What makes me laugh is when these folk say they prefer to “own” the software. 
Fact is, they never owned it. If they’d bothered to read the license then they’d know that they bought a license to use it, not own it. The difference being that they can’t sell the package on.  

When software cost £400 a pop, they complained. Now it costs a few quid a month, they still complain. 

Well, developers have to eat, so if they’re happy to pay full price on each upgrade, then that can work. 

ihatescreennames

Rayz2016 said:

lkrupp said:

ihatescreennames said:

I wish they hadn’t gone the subscription route. I used to recommend 1Password to people all the time. It was a little bit of a tough sell because many didn’t want to shell out $50 for, well, any software. Once I showed them how it worked for me it became easier but not always. Now that 1Password needs a monthly payment people balk even more, especially since Keychain does the job for most people. Keep in mind, it isn’t uncommon for me to hear people complain about paying $1 a month for 50GB of iCloud storage, so $3 is just crazy talk to them.

Then let ‘em get hacked. Who cares about the cheaptards? They are of no use to anyone, especially developers. They’re all over the Apple discussion forums. “I want an app that will run my life for me and do everything I want it to immediately and to my satisfaction... but it has to be free or it’s a no-go. I paid $4000 for my MacBook but I won’t pay a dime for any software to run on it.”

I subscribe to a number of what I consider mission critical apps and 1Password 7 is one of them, along with Office 365 and Quicken.

What makes me laugh is when these folk say they prefer to “own” the software. 
Fact is, they never owned it. If they’d bothered to read the license then they’d know that they bought a license to use it, not own it. The difference being that they can’t sell the package on.

Yeah, many people don't seem to understand licensing. Just like they didn't understand they don't own the music they purchased on a CD and could rip and distribute to their friends or whoever they wanted. I worked at a company that let the employees take home the entire Office suite and put it on their own computer. Most of those people then expected to get all software for free when they purchased a new computer. It's bizarre.

Well, developers have to eat, so if they’re happy to pay full price on each upgrade, then that can work. 

I don't mind upgrading my software when I'm ready and I like having the option to skip a version that doesn't offer anything I'm interested in. But subscriptions take both of those options away. Some things I don't mind subscribing to and some I do.

edit: I also think that when some people say they want to own their software they mean they want to pay for it one time. “Own” is just a simpler way of saying that.

And while I understand that developers have to eat, I also don’t think that’s my responsibility. Developers should be making and upgrading (if they so choose) a product I want to pay for. In most cases I’m not interested in a product that will stop working if I stop paying. I like to pay once and be done. This can be said for many things, not just software. 

edited May 2019

meterestnz

ihatescreennames said:

I wish they hadn’t gone the subscription route. I used to recommend 1Password to people all the time. It was a little bit of a tough sell because many didn’t want to shell out $50 for, well, any software. Once I showed them how it worked for me it became easier but not always. Now that 1Password needs a monthly payment people balk even more, especially since Keychain does the job for most people. Keep in mind, it isn’t uncommon for me to hear people complain about paying $1 a month for 50GB of iCloud storage, so $3 is just crazy talk to them.

I’m still using the App and in spite of the updates I will not be going the subscription route

justsomeguy1

maestro64 said:

vmarks said:

Subscription fatigue is real. I was happy paying for it as a standalone license, but it's a shame that they've made that option either unavailable or severely hidden. I want to own the license, not rent it. I want to store my vault where I'm comfortable with it, not on any password manager's server. I'm staying with 1Password 6 for now. I am not interested in software as a subscription, not when MS does it, not when Adobe does it, not when Intuit does it, and not when Agilebits does it.

Victor, i am with you, I will not update due to the subscription service and the fact I you can not sync it but through the subscription. I personally only sync via my home WiFi, i am not interested in placing my person login on something else's server.

So much ignorance. :-( Replying to both you and others:

1) Many people here have complained that they didn't upgrade because they don't want a subscription. Ok, fine, buy the license then. That option still exists. Now, if you want to complain that they make it hard to find that option... That's fair. I think it's a bad choice on their part to make it less than obvious.

2) Only syncing via home WiFi is an overabundance of caution, and you're just making your life harder. I keep my vaults on dropbox, and I fully expect dropbox to be compromised at some point. But it doesn't matter! The files are fully encrypted (twice in fact, IIRC) with a strong key. Nobody's going to get into my vault anytime in the next 20 years even if they get a copy of it.

3) You can use cloud storage other than Agilebit's in the latest version.

1Password is some of the best software I've ever used. It significantly improves the quality of my life on line. It's not perfect, and I'm deeply irritated by the subscription stuff and a couple of other things, but... it's still probably the best single purchase I've ever made.

edited May 2019

meterestnz

In most cases I’m not interested in a product that will stop working if I stop paying. I like to pay once and be done. This can be said for many things, not just software. 

That is my main beef, if you pay for the app in lump sum (own it) you get to choose when to upgrade and it will always work with its data. You can always keep an old computer to run it if necessary and if you computer/software cycle is out of sync you don’t have to upgrade for features your computer won’t use. Stop paying a subscription and the data is unusable from that point on. 

jdw

1Password is NOT exclusively a pay-per-month "service" insofar as the standalone app can be purchased.  I know because I prefer buying standalone apps and I wrote precisely how to buy that standalone version in their forum here:

https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/comment/451616/#Comment_451616

Just SAY NO to subscriptions!

edited May 2019

chasm

Various thoughts:

1. The keychain now takes care of the needs of 95+ percent of users. It’s really great and the seamless sync is a really huge advantage of the Apple ecosystem over the Android/Windows ecosystem.
2. If you do need something more than what keychain offers, 1Password is unquestionably the best one (don’t take my word for it, Wired just came to the same conclusion).
3. Subscriptions don’t bother me, because I’m selective about them and audit my use of subscription software at least twice a year. If AgileBits still had a purchase model, you’d be paying $50/year or thereabouts to stay up-to-date on the app ... under the subscription model, you get more support and pay ... $36 for an individual license. If you need family vaults, the $5/month tier looks like a stone-cold bargain to me ... $60/year on sub vs $50 let’s say every two years for four family members? That’s a no-brainer.
4. Having dealt with the staff on a few occasions, I like that they’re in Canada rather than the US, and I’ve had an unrelentingly positive and pleasant experience, including a nice chat when 7 first came out helping me decide which way to go with my upgrade (they still offered purchase at the time). So that’s important.

Bottom line: if you have a friend or relative that’s not a nerd but has Apple stuff, teach them how to use the built-in keychain tools in Safari, and how to look up passwords in Accounts and Passwords/Keychain Assistant for reassurance. They won’t need to, but I find it makes people feel a lot better.

If you have a need to have a password manager beyond keychain for the purposes of family/business/other features, 1Password is extremely well-supported and inexpensive for what you get (particularly on the family tier). Take a look at the other ones (LastPass, Dashlane, etc) too.

edited May 2019

rembert

I still don't regret my move from 1Password to Bitwarden.

wlym

It's a great app. But $3USD, per month, for EVER is too much for me. I'll ride out my various purchased versions until they no longer work and then move to another password manager. It's bad enough I'm held hostage by Adobe but at least it's a huge package of software. Sure, "developers have to eat", but so do their customers.

micdorsey

vmarks said:

Subscription fatigue is real. I was happy paying for it as a standalone license, but it's a shame that they've made that option either unavailable or severely hidden. I want to own the license, not rent it. I want to store my vault where I'm comfortable with it, not on any password manager's server. I'm staying with 1Password 6 for now. I am not interested in software as a subscription, not when MS does it, not when Adobe does it, not when Intuit does it, and not when Agilebits does it.

Not all subscriptions are created equal. When you stop paying Adobe to use Creative Cloud, you are totally SOL. If you decide to move on from Quicken's subscription model, you at least have your data available (though not editable). If you decide to leave Spotify, simply subscribe elsewhere and rebuild playlists. Yes, I hate subscriptions in general and mainly avoid them. 1Password 6 is an excellent product and last I checked, still available for purchase.