The 1Password Safari extension eliminates a lot of friction when it comes to auto-filling passwords on websites. 1Password’s Quick Access window provides instant access to login information.īut my favorite changes to 1Password come on the integration side. They even went to the trouble of adding a proper Preferences window rather than a fake preferences window that floats inside the existing app window. I switched to 1Password 8 when I switched to using a Mac Studio as my primary Mac, so maybe it’s the Apple silicon (specifically the M1 Max) talking, but the app just feels fast. It feels more like a modern Mac app than the old version did. In redesigning 1Password, AgileBits has made it feel lighter and more modern.

The real question is, has AgileBits wrecked its Mac version, or does the new one measure up? Now that it’s out of beta, it’s time to judge. However, as someone who has been happily subscribed to 1Password and using its cloud vaults with a family plan for a few years now, that wasn’t an issue for me. Since local vaults are no longer supported, it won’t please users who don’t want to use 1Password’s cloud-based password vault system.

It’s been nine months, and 1Password 8 for Mac arrived this week. Just as there are good and bad Catalyst apps, there are good and bad Electron apps. But using a system like Electron does have consequences: Electron apps have a reputation for being slow, eating up a lot of system memory, and-perhaps most offensively-failing to behave like proper, “native” apps on whatever platform they operate. I think it’s fair to say that most users don’t care about the tools that a developer uses to write the apps we use. Last summer 1Password maker AgileBits made the wrong kind of news, when it announced that it was killing its traditional Mac app and replacing it with a new one built with Electron, a development system based on web technologies, on top of a cross-platform code base. 1Password 8 for Mac: An upgrade, after all

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