Rich Siegel said it better than I can in a Twitter thread, (thankfully archived on this guy’s blog), but the long and the short of it is that Electron apps are 1) far too resource hungry, and 2) remove what’s special about the Mac, shipping apps we all use with the lowest common denominator UI.
I’m still using 1Password, but I’m actively looking for a better alternative. So far, I haven’t found one. What 1P got so right is how fast you can get to your secrets.
This has been talked over here time and time again, and I agree that it’s frustrating that 1P is now non-native and enterprise based. They can do what they want as a huge company, but it feels weird to have been used as a customer number for them since the days of the macheist bundle (where I found them). However, being a day one customer of a Flexibits product feels kind of the same. (Let’s put TextExpander in the same category, while we’re at it.)
Anyway, I’m really interested in finding out if Apple is going to break Keychain out into a free-standing app on iOS. I’m already re-upped for another year with 1P, but if I could untether from another subscription for an offering that fits my needs, I’d do it.
I made the switch from 1P last year.
The big lesson is that most apps will import 1P, but if you end up not being happy with your new solution many apps have fairly poor exports or imports. I ended up needing to create a csv and reworking all the data. Choose an open format like keepass.
I’m now firmly ensconced with Strongbox. Not the prettiest app, but certainly the most future proof.
Excellent suggestion. Always know how you will get your data out of a program before using it.
Honestly, that sounds like enough for a hard pass for me. A diskette icon in 2023? That’s … just not right.
1998 called, they want their UI back.
Also, no keyboard shortcut? Nope.
How does Strongbox work on the iPhone? Does it play nicely with the autofill feature? It states autofill on their website.
I used some Keepass based apps in the past, but they didn’t integrate in to the auto fill - however, that was probably a long time ago now when it first came out and since then I’ve been with 1Password.
I’m not strictly looking to change, but it might be nice to investigate some alternatives - Keepass on Windows was good.
Similarly in Strongbox, you click what looks to me like a pencil icon to edit, but you click a Commit button (CMD+S) or a Commit & Close button (CMD+RETURN) to save.
It works pretty well on windows. It immediately generates a pop up code that you have to enter into another window but then it fills in the password.
If you’re looking for top notch Security I would recommend but you also consider RoboForm
Quick update. I’ve had a quick look at Secrets and Strongbox.
After a reboot to fix some iCloud sync issues, Secrets seems OK. It doesn’t have the equivalent of an Identity object type from 1Password. These were converted to Notes.
Strongbox definitely shows its KeePass heritage which turns me off. Autofill is not available in the free release so I haven’t been able to see how well this works yet. They provide a free Pro period though.
Neither is as polished as 1Password in terms of user experience. Secrets is definitely more limited than 1Password, but I think it has potential.
Enpass has some quirks, for sure, but:
I’ve been using it for a couple of years now, and overall I’m pretty satisfied with it. It’s not as polished as 1PW (7) though.
I know it doesn’t help the OP but I love the latest version of 1password. It has removed so much friction from my multi-Mac, IPad and iPhone life that I don’t know how I’d live without it. It just keeps getting better and better.
The app works great. I little bit clunky, but I don’t miss 1P anymore. It does have autofill, but I never use it; never used it in 1P; so I’m afraid I can’t comment.
there are a lot of options, I personally use Bitwarden.
I use the bitwarden client on all devices, have the premium family servive (30,- per year) and self host a vaultwarden back-end so have a self-hosted backup
Apart from being almost 100% feature compatible it also has the option to link with duckduckgo email adress generation so I can create usernames on the fly with unique email addresses that have all trackers removed automatically 
Works very well for me on iPhone and iPad.
Thanks - might be worth looking at then, as I like having the actual password file myself and only used 1Password online for the ease of use, as the Keepass apps I tried also didn’t support sync (at the time).
I think DashLane has native apps. Has anyone used it?
They do indeed, I’ve used them for about 3 months. The experience was a bit cumbersome. They app is catalyst on the Mac and basically not great for data entry, shortcuts are missing, you need to place for cursor before typing, pressing tab doesn’t always move you to the next input etc.
Other than that, they recently removed their Safari extension and switched to using the native autofill (like Keychain) and lots of people complained as the experience is inferior, other password managers have tried the same approach and there are certain drawbacks.
A couple days ago, they rolled that back, and they released an early access Safari extension that’s supposed to get your data from the web app instead of the native app. I don’t know, it feels like the software is not mature at all.
1Password is not perfect by any means but it feels like all other solutions are way behind. I know lots of people like Bitwarden but mostly because it’s free / 10$ year. It is not as polished as 1P, it’s an electron app, too and the integration between the extension and the app is not great either. All in all, unfortunately there is no competition to 1P.
I think you’re right. Even if it’s not perfect, the user experience of 1Password is head and shoulders above the others. Most of the apps I’ve looked at so far get some things right but then have other aspects that are really rough.
We use 1Password at work and I remembered they offer a free family account to business customers. I’m still not crazy about having to store data on their servers and this option might make it even harder to migrate away at a future date. There are going to be trade-offs whichever way I go…