1Password 8 will be electron, subscription only, and no longer support local vaults

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I have mixed feelings about this.

  1. The subscription price is low at $3/month for an individual assuming I’m looking at the right page.
  2. 1Password is, in my opinion, one of the best and one of the more essential applications available.
  3. I understand the need for a steady income stream and I do not begrudge the developers. If any app is deserving of a subscription, it is probably 1 Password.

But we are once again faced with another subscription. There is a limit to how many subscriptions that consumers can and/or are willing to pay.

For lack of a better phrase, “subscription creep” can get out of hand. After a while, “it is only $x/month” isn’t viable.

To avoid excessive subscription creep I’ve canceled the following apps that I initially was willing to try under a subscription model but on balance decided the workflow ROI was not sufficient to continue paying:

  • Ulysses
  • Carrot Weather
  • The Weather Channel
  • Fantastical
  • Drafts Pro
  • unRead
  • Gemini 2
  • TextExpander

What I have left and that I’m considering eliminating:

  • Mindnode: will probably keep, could replace with another mind mapping application or just revert to using my OmniOutliner app–not my preference though
  • 1 Password: Although I’d give up a lot of features, I’ll consider defaulting to Apple’s iCloud Keychain
  • ReadWise: I’m running a trial version and I really like this service so I have to decide HOW MUCH I like it. :slight_smile:
  • Craft: I may just move over to Obsidian, which I’ve been using extensively. Now that Things 3 supports markdown in its notes feature, this will provide seamless integration between Obsidian and Things.

Subscriptions add up; over several years the cost becomes “real money.” :slight_smile:

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IF, and it is a pretty BIG if, I decided to migrate out of 1Password to Apple Keychain, is there a “best practice” how to go about this?

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That’s true, but the last place I’m going to cheap out is password security. So $0.10/day for 1Password is the first line in my budget.

I think we’re close to the point where we will have to choose between subscription apps and apps that don’t have long to live. The same thing seems to be happening to native apps. Several years ago I spoke to a rep from a company that made church management software. They switched from a Microsoft SQL server based package to cloud based because “every time Microsoft updates their software they break ours”. Now it seems like everything is cloud based and “works best in the browser”.


Looks like I may have responded to the wrong post. You can select all your items in 1PW, except documents, then print out everything (one vault at a time). Then you will need to download any documents and prepare for the joy of setting up a new 2FA authentication app if you were using that feature in 1PW.

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Besides the mandatory move to subscription, the removal of local vaults is a big betrayal to old customers. Not everyone wants their password stored on 1P servers. When they introduced the subscription, they pinky sweared local vault support will be supported.

I’m also worried what happens for iOS version. While I can remain on 1P7 to use local vaults on desktop, maybe some day an auto update on iOS would make it stop working.

But in any case, I’m not tempted to subscribe. I’d need to consider an alternative soon. Maybe BitWarden or KeePass with Strongbox/Keepassium.

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Being someone with the “Early Earl” achievement on the Launch Special Plan I obviously don’t mind paying for a 1Password subscription (I can hardly think of any other App that needs to be properly maintained to continue using it).

Electron, however, hurts… :cry:

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So long, 1Password, it was nice while it lasted.

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I’ve installed the early access, doesn’t feel very electrony though it does seem to spawn a lot more processes

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Et tu, 1Password?

I wonder if the new MFA support in Safari will also be “good enough”.

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I find it interesting that when they first offered subscriptions alongside standalone licensing (version 7) only 2-3% chose standalone. Which means that everyone complaining about it here is basically a tiny minority of 1Password customers. 97-8% of their customer base chooses subscriptions.

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I have multiple subscriptions for 1Password, both on the family side and the business side. I don’t mind supporting them, but an Electron app? I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and see how this goes, but that alone is usually a red flag for me. Slack is the only app I can think of off the top of my head that really pulls off the experience fairly well.

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As somebody who navigated that upgrade and insisted on a standalone license, I can say that they made the standalone license very, very hard to find. That makes their percentages highly suspect as a gauge of what people want.

That’s the big deal to me, too. I’d be fine with everything else - including the subscription - if local vaults were still an option.

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Where does it say it’s electron?

No longer local vaults is a big deal :frowning:

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I’m assuming because it’s written in rust that it’s assumed it’s electron

I’d suggest changing that then. From what I understood from their job listings, they’ve made the logic for cryptography and such that’s shared across operating systems in rust but the UIs are still native (besides Linux which has always been separate as the 1Password X

Open up the 1Password application package and navigate to /Contents/Frameworks/ and you’ll see the Electron Framework.

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Fair enough! That’s disappointing

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I’ve used 1Password for almost exactly 10 years and was for a number of years moderator on the forums. I remember well the time when promises were made about not moving to a subscription model and how quickly that changed.

I shall move to an alternative password manager after carrying out the appropriate research.

Stephen

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It won’t offer the added protection of the secret key so I’d recommend you use a 30 character random generated password on your Mac :wink: