14 ms·

1Password for Mac Moving to Electron

179 points by mofle 5y ago

bgentry 5y ago
The most disturbing part about this is that their support team has been misleading people on Twitter all morning, not truthfully answering straightforward questions about whether the app is Electron: https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425429965747720200 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425429965747720200 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425470169133031435 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425470169133031435 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425476888072495111 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425476888072495111
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  It's like talking to an estate agent (realtor in the US).
- newman314 5y ago
  I'm curious to see if they have finally killed off standalone. I've been a 1Password user for years but have staunchly resisted going to their subscription model because I want my data local. It's infuriating that 1Password has steadily downplayed standalone versions to the point where it's almost impossible to find.
  - bgentry 5y ago
    They have, the removal of a standalone option was also part of this announcement.
    - newman314 5y ago
      Well, crap. I guess I'm staying on the current version for as long as possible and then considering options. I will state for the record that I think this is mindblowingly stupid.
      - reilly3000 5y ago
        It may be a good idea to consider a new option unless they are explicitly planning on maintaining security updates for v7.
        jhawk28 5y ago
        Its just a matter of time before the browser plugins stop working. Otherwise, the software should continue to work.
    - _moof 5y ago
      Wait, really? This seems like a buried lede.
    - CharlesW 5y ago
      > They have, the removal of a standalone option was also part of this announcement. Eh? They literally show the standalone app in the Tweet this submission links to.
      - nnf 5y ago
        "standalone" as it was used in the text you quoted means "supports local vaults" (i.e., can be used without paying for a subscription). Announcement discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247
        CharlesW 5y ago
        Oh! Thank you for explaining. I'm a 1Password user, but wasn't familiar with this functionality.
    - rtikulit 5y ago
      I guess I'm done with 1Password, then. The thousandth cut broke this camel's back (or something like that).
      - vmladenov 5y ago
        Hopefully a native developer like Panic picks up the torch. iCloud Keychain is ok but it’s very limited
  - decrypt 5y ago
    The standalone license was killed off a while ago, I guess a month ago.
- rvz 5y ago
  It has been painfully admitted that they are moving to Electron. Mentioning 'It's using Rust' doesn't make it any faster or efficient since at the end of the day, it is going to be slower regardless. This tweet by a user called _cprecioso is priceless of the reaction on 1Password's move to Electron. [0] [0] https://twitter.com/_cprecioso/status/1425429383880318980 https://twitter.com/_cprecioso/status/1425429383880318980
  - the_optimist 5y ago
    Why do you think it’s going to be slower, and in comparison to what?
    - gumby 5y ago
      > Why do you think it’s going to be slower Have you ever used an electron app? Typically slow and laggy. Worse, your workflow is typically slower since the user don’t get any the advantages of native integration.
      - kristofferR 5y ago
        Yeah, just look at this atrocity: https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo/1 https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo... They didn't even bother using a real window for the app settings, they just use an Electron modal window.
        aniforprez 5y ago
        You've been spamming this comment repeatedly on this thread. I don't think this is particularly deal breaking or concerning at all. Electron apps actually have no issues spawning new windows for settings and such. Here it just seems like a different design design and not a particularly egregious one. I'm really not sure what's so earth shatteringly awful about this. If you show me something that shows the app actively losing functionality because of this change I will agree that this was a bad move
      - 5y ago
- threatofrain 5y ago
  I kind of don't understand why customer support would answer customer questions that way — Oh my, did you just a question about Electron? Because I swear you asked about our RUST BACKEND. Let's talk more about that.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    They're like this when anyone asks about non subscription licenses too.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > I kind of don't understand why customer support would answer customer questions that way — Oh my, did you just a question about Electron? Because I swear you asked about our RUST BACKEND. Let's talk more about that. I see two possibilities: 1. They were told "it was written in Rust, mention that a bunch and link this blogpost for street cred" and actually have no idea what either Rust or Electron is beyond they're "technologies." 2. It's a ham-handed attempt at distraction. My money is on #1.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      They've heard complaints about Electron since the Linux beta. They do the same thing basically when anyone asks about buying instead of subscribing. Or any of the removed sync options. It's #2.
- theonething 5y ago
  I've found the support on the their support forum to be quite lacking. Often times, people not knowing the answer and making things up or not answering the question. So this seems par for the course for them.
- radley 5y ago
  Uhm... each of those tweets links to the same article that states they use Electron: Finally we bundled everything using Electron to allow us to integrate deeply with the operating system.
  - bgentry 5y ago
    In addition to not answering the simple question in the tweet, they linked to an article about the Linux app, which in no way clarifies whether the Mac app uses the same UI framework.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  The thing I find totally infuriating is, this strategy of decoupling the backend business logic into a performant, cross-platform Rust service seems really smart! Now that you have decoupled brains, you could put it behind a native front end, brilliant, Adobe should have done this with their Creative Suite a decade ago. But no, they used this strategy to support a trash cross-platform frontend. Wonderful. Will be evaluating ElPass this weekend.
  - fnord123 5y ago
    FWIW on Linux my 1Password is using 122MB Resident (with 37GB Virtual which is a weirdly huge amount) according to htop. It also uses about 1% of the CPU when idle according to system monitor. And according to sysprof it was in 6-10% of my machine's traces from some short samples I just took.
    - mananaysiempre 5y ago
      37GB virtual might just be a mostly-harmless convenient fiction for something like a BIBOP-style[1] allocator. I haven’t observed this with Electron apps, but WebKitGTK-based web browsers like Epiphany and Eolie do do funny things to my process list with their dozens of processes consuming 100+ GB virtual memory (in reality, address space) each. [1]: https://foldoc.org/Big+bag+of+pages https://foldoc.org/Big+bag+of+pages
- pier25 5y ago
  Not surprising, considering how badly 1Password handled the removal of dropbox vaults back in 2017 or so.
cloogshicer 5y ago
Currently 1Password's UX is just awful. - On macOS, half the time auto fill doesn't work. Saving a password is very inconsistent. - When you auto generate a password, the least resistance UI workflow is to first save and fill it - but then when you create the account it is saved again, making it a duplicate. - The "move to trash" button is obscurely hidden somehow (used to be much better). - And don't get me started on the Windows client - on my fast gaming PC it takes forever just to unlock the vault. I've cancelled my subscription and won't renew once it runs out.
- bussierem 5y ago
  Highly recommend trying BitWarden! I'm a paying user of it myself. It also has export of data and full self-hosted options as well. The browser plugins work amazingly well. The phone app is...i would say 75-80%. I've had trouble sometimes getting it to popup the "auto-fill" but otherwise it works very slick (supporting biometric unlock too).
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    Bitwarden doesn't do iCloud sync to iOS, or does it? (didn't when I had a look at it a while back).
    - bussierem 5y ago
      I do not have an iPhone so I am not sure, sorry!
    - ripply 5y ago
      No the vault is not able to be a local vault but you can self host your vault on your own server and it uses secure remote password for logging in just like 1password. It also has end to end encryption for the vault. The only way for your vault to get compromised is through a server compromise and brute forcing your password, due to how SRP works, even if DNS was taken over and someone intercepted your login request it’s not possible to derive anything about your password and the client would detect that the remote doesn’t actually have the vault. Even if they man in the middled the login they can’t learn about your password or get access to your encrypted vault.
rcarmo 5y ago
Like I commented the other day, they are losing me as a customer because of that - and because of "improving" the vault format so that it no longer syncs with iOS via iCloud. This is going to cause all sorts of grief when we are forced to upgrade the iOS app to align with 8 and lose the ability to sync via that. I wouldn't mind paying for a Family license if I didn't have to use their sync service - I just don't trust it (marketing-wise, reliability-wise and security-wise, since it's designed purely as a retention factor) and would vastly prefer sticking to pure iCloud syncing.
- erichurkman 5y ago
  Do you have a link to read more about the loss of iCloud sync? If that's accurate, goodbye 1password. I was irked (but understood) the move into a subscription model, but this step would make no sense from a personal sec-ops perspective. While I generally am not a fan of iCloud (and how it forces certain things to sync onto devices), I really do NOT want yet another "cloud" to store incredibly sensitive info like password vaults.
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    Sure, here you go. It's buried in their community forums and dressed up as an "improvement" for "non-technical" people: https://1password.community/discussion/comment/602340/#Comment_602340 https://1password.community/discussion/comment/602340/#Comme...
    - erichurkman 5y ago
      Wow, talk about being buried. (Curmudgeon engaged) These company communications are just a few ironic emojis away from fitting in with Facebook MLM spam and don't instill much confidence.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  they are losing me as a customer because of that I don't think they care - they are chasing the enterprise market who doesn't care how well the desktop client works as long as it integrates with their enterprise SSO solution and gives them the audit logs they need. My company uses 1Password, and their license includes a free 1Password family license for employees.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I wouldn't mind Electron for applications I only use occasionally. What I don't want is something so heavy in my startup folder.
Exuma 5y ago
Disgusting
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>This is the kind of shit I knew was going to happen when they raised money and entered the VC rat race years ago. Things we original users loved, like great apps, would be less of a priority. At least they weren't "joining" Google or Microsoft.
mcyukon 5y ago
This is the second time that 1Password Co has done something that I consider a negative... The first one being them "hiding" the standalone version purchase link. Doesn't give me much faith in their future plans which seen to be all about change for changes sake and extracting as much money out of customers as possible. That being said BitWarden uses Electron and Angular for their desktop apps as well.
- gregoire 5y ago
  Hiding the standalone version purchase link helps them justify the move to a subscription-only service: > The overwhelming majority of people (97% in fact) choose to subscribe to our new service and many of those who initially purchased a license later changed their mind and traded it in for a membership. (Source: https://1password.community/discussion/comment/601917/#Comment_601917 https://1password.community/discussion/comment/601917/#Comme...) Which is quite dishonest IMO.
  - johnatwork 5y ago
    I, for one could not find the standalone. Now I feel like I've been had, and have a bad taste in my mouth. I'm moving to something else. Currently trying out Secrets for MacOS, it will be hard to work with my one PC as it's not crossplatform, but I think I can deal with that.
Ansil849 5y ago
Could someone give a bird's eye view summary of why 1Password moving to Electron is bad? Are there documented security risks, or is it more just a UX/UI aesthetic issue?
- whitepoplar 5y ago
  Memory bloat, for one.
- brandon272 5y ago
  It's popular to hate on Electron. The most common argument thrown around is "bloat". I also detect a perception among engineers that they consider Electron "the easy way out" vs. maintaining strictly native apps. Reminds me of the discourse around Sharkbite fittings on plumbing forums. I have to wonder what percentage of 1Password users know what languages or frameworks 1Password uses, much less care what languages or frameworks it uses? I assume it must be a fraction of 1%.
  - kristofferR 5y ago
    They're gonna know as soon as they try to configure their settings: https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo/1 https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo...
    - brandon272 5y ago
      Yes, if they are someone familiar with what Electron even is, which is not most people. And even among software engineers who might know and care about Electron, for what percentage of those people is Electron a dealbreaker?
  - vmladenov 5y ago
    Electron apps are laggy and frequently lack native features whereas Cocoa apps often get them for free when the OS updates.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
pjmlp 5y ago
Oh well. Thankfully I only use at company issued laptop.
wdb 5y ago
That's disappointing. Maybe I should give Secrets or Bitwarden a shot now. Wondering if they will refund my outstanding balance into cash
- mb7733 5y ago
  Doesn't Bitwarden also use electron?
- yuuta 5y ago
  Unfortunately, Bitwarden uses Electron as well.
hs86 5y ago
1Password and the Tower git client were somewhat similar: They started on native Mac first and years later introduced a native Windows version that lacked behind in features and polish. 1Password for Windows slowly(!) caught up, and even after all this investment, they decided that going for a web-based UI across all desktop OSes is the better solution. Tower did not change this: Their Windows version is still lacking, and I am still confused by their website about which features are Mac-only and which are also on Windows. Are they in a better position now for sticking with native apps? I stopped using them and moved to GitKraken that has the same UI across OSes. It is not as pleasing as that mature macOS version of Tower, but it is still better than constantly switching between an awesome and a "meh" app. Maybe cross-platform consistency is more important than having one main attraction and multiple sideshows.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  For a nice git client that’s fully native under both macOS and Windows, I strongly recommend Fork[1]. [1]: https://git-fork.com https://git-fork.com
  - deergomoo 5y ago
    I’ve been very happy with Fork on macOS. Paid for it a few years ago and never been asked to pay for a new version, even though I totally would at this point. A couple of times when I’ve had support queries I’ve got quick email responses directly from the developer too.
    - filchermcurr 5y ago
      Throwing my support in for Fork as well. I've been following it since it was a free beta and it's always been a great product. As mentioned, the developer(s) are very responsive to e-mails and have been very nice when dealing with my stupid questions and suggestions. Definitely recommended.
- jacobkg 5y ago
  I’ve been really enjoying Sublime Merge as a replacement for Tower
DavideNL 5y ago
It’s sad to see good apps move to a subscription model, resulting in more profit, at the cost of losing customers with a limited budget. Yet another app that will no longer be accessible to many people.
tzs 5y ago
I'm somewhat baffled and amused by how much hate Electron gets on HN when an existing app moves to it or a new app uses it while at the same time whenever editors and/or IDEs are discussed Visual Studio Code (an Electron all) is massively praised.
- ecf 5y ago
  It’s pretty easy to understand. VSCode was an electron app from day one and never tried to be a first-class Mac app while the only reason 1Password is around today is because customers loved having a lightweight, native manager that always was quick to support new OS features. Essentially, native Mac apps switching to electron is a bait and switch.
  - apple4ever 5y ago
    And I would say VSCode has its own annoyances but due to the fact there are few other good options (that are native Mac at least) its still praised.
    - Eric_WVGG 5y ago
      Nova is a good native Mac option
      - shawndellysse 5y ago
        I looked at it when it first came out but not since, does it have a typescript debugger yet?
        Eric_WVGG 5y ago
        Yup, via LSP just like Visual Studio Code. There were a couple quirks in the early days but it improved at a rapid clip.
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    I'm not a Mac user these days, what OS features will it be missing now?
siproprio 5y ago
on other news, is the onedrive app also electron as well? because I noticed it doubled the memory usage and slows my machine
blowski 5y ago
I just can’t get on the “let’s all hate Electron because it’s non-performant” bandwagon. I can understand why, say, a text editor in Electron might be frustrating. But in the case of 1Password, I spend barely time in the app itself so I’m really not bothered about speed. I’m bothered about security - it’s the reason I use 1Password. I’m bothered about pricing. I’m bothered about support across different operating systems. I’m bothered about features that make adoption easier. How are these things affected?
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  >I can understand why, say, a text editor in Electron might be frustrating. Atom (my current daily driver) and Visual Studio Code are both Electron apps and are plenty fast.
  - blowski 5y ago
    I didn't realise that! That's a happy surprise that further reinforces my view.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  I’m less concerned about performance and more about how Electron usage means that 1Password will be yet another app doing its own thing for UI instead of obeying platform conventions. For this kind of app, getting in, pulling the info you need, and getting out quickly is highly valuable and native apps lend themselves to that by virtue of not inventing their own rulesets. Electron apps also tend to be less than great at startup times. That said, performance becomes a consideration with any app that gets frequent use — one Electron app isn’t too bad, but when you’re running multiple it piles up and starts to turn your machine into a ball of tar, especially if you already have a bunch of browser tabs. This is particularly relevant on RAM limited machines… your 32GB+ RAM workstation isn’t going to sweat it, but your 8GB MacBook Air sure will.
aarpmcgee 5y ago
Wow, very disappointing. Will be researching alternatives and at this point, it’s a pretty sure bet that I will no longer be an AgileBits customer.
drcongo 5y ago
RIP 1P. It's been a long and painful death, but Agile Bits have been killing this app with every single thing they've done for the last 4 or 5 years.
asdff 5y ago
What was even the value proposition of using 1password over the native keychain access on mac? Generating passwords? Safari does this now (albeit always ignores the website's specific password rules and gets it wrong most of the time)
- kristofferR 5y ago
  Two-factor authentication support is really nice, the code is auto-filled when you fill your password. It auto-unlocks through your Apple Watch too.
- riobard 5y ago
  Better UX. System keychain UI is very primitive…
- macintux 5y ago
  I keep far more than just passwords: family SSNs, software license keys, license plate numbers and VINs, meatspace passcodes, etc.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  One is vault sharing. Most companies I've worked with will give me a corporate 1Password vault that snaps nearly into my system with no conflicts. Another is MFA support, native keychain doesn't support that at all.
  - weikju 5y ago
    macOS Monterey's keychain (as well as iOS 15) will support MFA, though
- gumby 5y ago
  Sharing cross platform. Also I share some vaults (with my kids, and also with my aging parents). But this is such a step backwards it doesn’t seem worth continuing with 1Password, after more than a dozen years.
- kall 5y ago
  If it‘s worth the effort to you, you can try to amend the password rules here: https://github.com/apple/password-manager-resources/blob/main/quirks/password-rules.json https://github.com/apple/password-manager-resources/blob/mai...
riobard 5y ago
I'll recommend Elpass as a much, much better alternative. Completely native to Mac and iOS, and sync via iCloud. https://elpass.app https://elpass.app
- monocularvision 5y ago
  Any suggestions for a family looking to share some passwords and not others? This, for me, is the killer feature for 1Password’s subscription service and why I happily pay them each year.
- macintux 5y ago
  Thanks, I’ve been fine paying a subscription but I don’t like the trends.
- moepstar 5y ago
  Uh, i guess you're talking about Enpass? I've switched from 1Password to Enpass as well, however my experience is a bit... mixed... Not sure i'd fault something specific, however the overall polish 1Password has still isn't there. I'm using Enpass on Linux, Mac and iOS - my SO still has an 1Password 4.something install (i think) on her Windows computer. If that one is going to somehow "expire", i'm going to selfhost Bitwarden probably... Edit: ok, wow - there really is an App called Elpass - TIL... Edit2: sure, bring on the downvotes :S i guess no one ever naively assumed that 2 letters almost next to each other could have been a typo. To further explain why i assumed it was a typo is because i've never, ever heard of Elpass before - all the while being a user of password managers for years. Even more so when researching my options about 2 years ago before switching to Enpass and never heard of Elpass being mentioned, not even once. I suppose it is pretty new-ish then? Or a hidden gem? Or gosh both?
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  if anyone is wondering, ElPass’s 1Password import works really well. Includes one-time MFA settings! (no secure documents, though) first impressions, massively faster than 1Password 7. Feels "lean."
- Hackbraten 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arminiusreturns 5y ago
Bitwarden for shared environments, keepassxc for local. You're welcome.
- Railworks2 5y ago
  Go check what Bitwarden clients use. You're welcome.
  - arminiusreturns 5y ago
    Oh no, I had only ever used their web interface. Thank you for the heads up. I personally refuse to install anything electron or nodejs on my systems, so I guess I won't be using the desktop bitwarden client anytime soon. Are there any good bitwarden alternatives? (shared env pass managers)
throwawaycuriou 5y ago
Upside: Linux users have a client that's easier kept in sync with features and development on Win/Mac.
- 1--6zVa-E 5y ago
  They could’ve kept Windows & Linux in sync and kept Mac separate. As they said themselves, “Mac has always held a special place in [their] heart.”
knodi 5y ago
I really don't want to move away from 1Password but they're really forcing my departure here.
TriStateFarmer 5y ago
Can we start talking in terms of "Environmental Impact"? Work out the energy use per hour of the old vs the new system * number of installs. See how much extra millions of tons of carbon 1password is spewing into the air because of their technology change! Reminder: when a company chooses a technology stack that suits them (the developers of the software) and NOT the end users, then things tend to go badly.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  Textbook case (culprit): Evernote
- TriStateFarmer 5y ago
  How can a password manager require 80 threads to run on a Mac?Old version required 12.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  Typical tech company will use 90% of it's energy running the HVAC unit so that Susan in accounting stops complaining about being cold but people will freak out cause the app uses slightly more energy.
  - TriStateFarmer 5y ago
    "people freak out cause the app uses slightly more energy" Multiply the "slightly" by 100 million installs!
    - johnatwork 5y ago
      Man, this is like when someone was arguing with me that Right on Reds is not that impactful to the environment, they said something like "Oh on average it only cuts off 30 seconds off of someone's commute." ...Ooookay, now times that by everyone commuting.
      - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
occz 5y ago
What a shame, I liked 1Password in particular because of the high quality of their native apps.
dang 5y ago
Ongoing and related: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247 Recent and related: 1password is considering a self-hosted option to store vaults - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28104134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28104134 - Aug 2021 (215 comments)
fdgdfgdfgaaa 5y ago
Trusting any cloud based password manager to me seems absurd and stupid.
- nilstycho 5y ago
  Why? Do you not trust that your data on the cloud is encrypted?
- mcyukon 5y ago
  Which is the reason why some of us are upset. Before version 8 of 1Password you could have a local database that you could manually and properly sync to different places if you so chose. And backups. With 1Password 8, you have no choice but to upload everything to their cloud. And if you don't trust their backups online, and want to follow the 1-2-3 rule you have to spend a lot of time finding the local cache 1Password keeps so you can make a backup by syncing a folder, or use the export feature which doesn't create a perfect mirror of what is stored in 1Password when it comes to tags, links, documents
- 1--6zVa-E 5y ago
  Holding this opinion seems kind of absurd. It’s quite easy to put trust in reputable password managers like 1Password and Bitwarden.
api 5y ago
Uninstall...
johnnybronson90 5y ago
Why do you even care.
pier25 5y ago
Why are they even using Electron instead of native web views? In my experience it's perfectly fine to use a web app for your UI. What's not OK is to bundle Chrome and Node in your app.
Scheris 5y ago
Planning on moving to Apple Keychain once the releases in the fall are out, as it’ll have 2FA support. Only Electron app that’s been half decent is VS Code, but that’s a full blown editor. Wasting RAM on a password manager due to Electron is a no go for me.
raydev 5y ago
Interesting that raising $100mm in funding isn't enough to pay a few dedicated macOS developers.
ShakataGaNai 5y ago
Yes, Electron has a bad wrap. In the early days it was a horrific ram hog and even today it still can be for certain poorly optimized apps. But any company today that spends a little time optimizing their application ends up reasonably performant and using reasonable system resources. At the end of the day, It's a lot of investment to build an app native for macos, linux and windows. Plus the web. Plus CLI. Plus multiple native mobile platforms. If you can trade 75% of that out for a single "platform", then you can focus all your engineers on the same thing. More features, sooner, and available for everyone - no more 2nd class platforms. Almost of the core applications that drive basically everything in my life, including Brave, 1Password, Inkdrop, VS Code, Email, Office Suite, Slack, Discord... are either directly in browser (Ex Gmail & Outlook.com), Electron or some similar "browser in a box" type solutions. Yes, I am unusual in that I work on Mac, Windows and Linux machines on a regular basis. However it's amazing that all my apps work the same everywhere I go. You know what else is awesome about that? I can recommend those apps to everyone, regardless of what platform you're on. No more "Just use X? Oh you're on a mac... uh... sorry no idea". Ask me for help? Cool, works the same everywhere so I can help you.
- manigandham 5y ago
  > "it's amazing that all my apps work the same everywhere I go" Exactly. I vastly prefer this than the slight (if any) performance advantage with native apps, and I've used plenty of slow native apps too. Bad code is bad code and it's strange how much dogmatic hate Electron gets on HN.
- johnatwork 5y ago
  For some, we don't need more features, we just need reliability and speed. I don't care if my IDE takes an extra beat or so. But I want and need my password right fast, as soon as I need it. Every slow app that I use is by necessity not choice. Slack would be the first thing I uninstall as soon as my work doesn't need it, it would honestly be my first action.
lupinglade 5y ago
See ya!
wdr1 5y ago
Is the hate around Electron just due to bloat? TBH, I don't care if there's no security ramifications.
- 1--6zVa-E 5y ago
  Electron does potentially have some security implications. Although, as others have pointed out, the 1Password development team likely has enough knowledge and manpower to keep up.
akfanta 5y ago
I have been using this app for 9 years because of its polished UX. I don't even mind paying for subscription model because of it, but this is killing its top selling point for me. Bye bye 1p.
darnfish 5y ago
I downloaded the beta and it works fine, it feels native enough for me not to want to switch over. I really do hate poorly implemented Electron apps though, Discord is okay but Slack is terrible and I'm a Sublime Text user until I can get an M1 to handle that slow asf VS Code cold start (and sometimes hot depending on how many things you have going on)
Khaine 5y ago
This is disappointing. One of the reasons 1Password is much loved is because it's a high quality native application. It fits perfectly into macOS. Even the best electron apps, suck as macOS (or windows or linux) citizens. There are little things that don't just work properly.
gregors 5y ago
Electron is really a subpar user experience. The polish of the mac app was amazing. I can't convey how disappointed I am.
grumpy-cowboy 5y ago
Nice a password manager taking 1GB of RAM and 20% of CPU.

179 points by mofle 5y ago

The most disturbing part about this is that their support team has been misleading people on Twitter all morning, not truthfully answering straightforward questions about whether the app is Electron: https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425429965747720200 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425429965747720200 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425470169133031435 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425470169133031435 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425476888072495111 https://twitter.com/1Password/status/1425476888072495111

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
It's like talking to an estate agent (realtor in the US).
newman314 5y ago
I'm curious to see if they have finally killed off standalone. I've been a 1Password user for years but have staunchly resisted going to their subscription model because I want my data local. It's infuriating that 1Password has steadily downplayed standalone versions to the point where it's almost impossible to find.
- bgentry 5y ago
  They have, the removal of a standalone option was also part of this announcement.
  - newman314 5y ago
    Well, crap. I guess I'm staying on the current version for as long as possible and then considering options. I will state for the record that I think this is mindblowingly stupid.
    - reilly3000 5y ago
      It may be a good idea to consider a new option unless they are explicitly planning on maintaining security updates for v7.
      - jhawk28 5y ago
        Its just a matter of time before the browser plugins stop working. Otherwise, the software should continue to work.
  - _moof 5y ago
    Wait, really? This seems like a buried lede.
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    > They have, the removal of a standalone option was also part of this announcement. Eh? They literally show the standalone app in the Tweet this submission links to.
    - nnf 5y ago
      "standalone" as it was used in the text you quoted means "supports local vaults" (i.e., can be used without paying for a subscription). Announcement discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247
      - CharlesW 5y ago
        Oh! Thank you for explaining. I'm a 1Password user, but wasn't familiar with this functionality.
  - rtikulit 5y ago
    I guess I'm done with 1Password, then. The thousandth cut broke this camel's back (or something like that).
    - vmladenov 5y ago
      Hopefully a native developer like Panic picks up the torch. iCloud Keychain is ok but it’s very limited
- decrypt 5y ago
  The standalone license was killed off a while ago, I guess a month ago.
rvz 5y ago
It has been painfully admitted that they are moving to Electron. Mentioning 'It's using Rust' doesn't make it any faster or efficient since at the end of the day, it is going to be slower regardless. This tweet by a user called _cprecioso is priceless of the reaction on 1Password's move to Electron. [0] [0] https://twitter.com/_cprecioso/status/1425429383880318980 https://twitter.com/_cprecioso/status/1425429383880318980
- the_optimist 5y ago
  Why do you think it’s going to be slower, and in comparison to what?
  - gumby 5y ago
    > Why do you think it’s going to be slower Have you ever used an electron app? Typically slow and laggy. Worse, your workflow is typically slower since the user don’t get any the advantages of native integration.
    - kristofferR 5y ago
      Yeah, just look at this atrocity: https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo/1 https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo... They didn't even bother using a real window for the app settings, they just use an Electron modal window.
      - aniforprez 5y ago
        You've been spamming this comment repeatedly on this thread. I don't think this is particularly deal breaking or concerning at all. Electron apps actually have no issues spawning new windows for settings and such. Here it just seems like a different design design and not a particularly egregious one. I'm really not sure what's so earth shatteringly awful about this. If you show me something that shows the app actively losing functionality because of this change I will agree that this was a bad move
    - 5y ago
threatofrain 5y ago
I kind of don't understand why customer support would answer customer questions that way — Oh my, did you just a question about Electron? Because I swear you asked about our RUST BACKEND. Let's talk more about that.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  They're like this when anyone asks about non subscription licenses too.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I kind of don't understand why customer support would answer customer questions that way — Oh my, did you just a question about Electron? Because I swear you asked about our RUST BACKEND. Let's talk more about that. I see two possibilities: 1. They were told "it was written in Rust, mention that a bunch and link this blogpost for street cred" and actually have no idea what either Rust or Electron is beyond they're "technologies." 2. It's a ham-handed attempt at distraction. My money is on #1.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    They've heard complaints about Electron since the Linux beta. They do the same thing basically when anyone asks about buying instead of subscribing. Or any of the removed sync options. It's #2.
theonething 5y ago
I've found the support on the their support forum to be quite lacking. Often times, people not knowing the answer and making things up or not answering the question. So this seems par for the course for them.
radley 5y ago
Uhm... each of those tweets links to the same article that states they use Electron: Finally we bundled everything using Electron to allow us to integrate deeply with the operating system.
- bgentry 5y ago
  In addition to not answering the simple question in the tweet, they linked to an article about the Linux app, which in no way clarifies whether the Mac app uses the same UI framework.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
The thing I find totally infuriating is, this strategy of decoupling the backend business logic into a performant, cross-platform Rust service seems really smart! Now that you have decoupled brains, you could put it behind a native front end, brilliant, Adobe should have done this with their Creative Suite a decade ago. But no, they used this strategy to support a trash cross-platform frontend. Wonderful. Will be evaluating ElPass this weekend.
- fnord123 5y ago
  FWIW on Linux my 1Password is using 122MB Resident (with 37GB Virtual which is a weirdly huge amount) according to htop. It also uses about 1% of the CPU when idle according to system monitor. And according to sysprof it was in 6-10% of my machine's traces from some short samples I just took.
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    37GB virtual might just be a mostly-harmless convenient fiction for something like a BIBOP-style[1] allocator. I haven’t observed this with Electron apps, but WebKitGTK-based web browsers like Epiphany and Eolie do do funny things to my process list with their dozens of processes consuming 100+ GB virtual memory (in reality, address space) each. [1]: https://foldoc.org/Big+bag+of+pages https://foldoc.org/Big+bag+of+pages
pier25 5y ago
Not surprising, considering how badly 1Password handled the removal of dropbox vaults back in 2017 or so.

cloogshicer 5y ago

Currently 1Password's UX is just awful. - On macOS, half the time auto fill doesn't work. Saving a password is very inconsistent. - When you auto generate a password, the least resistance UI workflow is to first save and fill it - but then when you create the account it is saved again, making it a duplicate. - The "move to trash" button is obscurely hidden somehow (used to be much better). - And don't get me started on the Windows client - on my fast gaming PC it takes forever just to unlock the vault. I've cancelled my subscription and won't renew once it runs out.

bussierem 5y ago
Highly recommend trying BitWarden! I'm a paying user of it myself. It also has export of data and full self-hosted options as well. The browser plugins work amazingly well. The phone app is...i would say 75-80%. I've had trouble sometimes getting it to popup the "auto-fill" but otherwise it works very slick (supporting biometric unlock too).
- rcarmo 5y ago
  Bitwarden doesn't do iCloud sync to iOS, or does it? (didn't when I had a look at it a while back).
  - bussierem 5y ago
    I do not have an iPhone so I am not sure, sorry!
  - ripply 5y ago
    No the vault is not able to be a local vault but you can self host your vault on your own server and it uses secure remote password for logging in just like 1password. It also has end to end encryption for the vault. The only way for your vault to get compromised is through a server compromise and brute forcing your password, due to how SRP works, even if DNS was taken over and someone intercepted your login request it’s not possible to derive anything about your password and the client would detect that the remote doesn’t actually have the vault. Even if they man in the middled the login they can’t learn about your password or get access to your encrypted vault.

rcarmo 5y ago

Like I commented the other day, they are losing me as a customer because of that - and because of "improving" the vault format so that it no longer syncs with iOS via iCloud. This is going to cause all sorts of grief when we are forced to upgrade the iOS app to align with 8 and lose the ability to sync via that. I wouldn't mind paying for a Family license if I didn't have to use their sync service - I just don't trust it (marketing-wise, reliability-wise and security-wise, since it's designed purely as a retention factor) and would vastly prefer sticking to pure iCloud syncing.

erichurkman 5y ago
Do you have a link to read more about the loss of iCloud sync? If that's accurate, goodbye 1password. I was irked (but understood) the move into a subscription model, but this step would make no sense from a personal sec-ops perspective. While I generally am not a fan of iCloud (and how it forces certain things to sync onto devices), I really do NOT want yet another "cloud" to store incredibly sensitive info like password vaults.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  Sure, here you go. It's buried in their community forums and dressed up as an "improvement" for "non-technical" people: https://1password.community/discussion/comment/602340/#Comment_602340 https://1password.community/discussion/comment/602340/#Comme...
  - erichurkman 5y ago
    Wow, talk about being buried. (Curmudgeon engaged) These company communications are just a few ironic emojis away from fitting in with Facebook MLM spam and don't instill much confidence.
Johnny555 5y ago
they are losing me as a customer because of that I don't think they care - they are chasing the enterprise market who doesn't care how well the desktop client works as long as it integrates with their enterprise SSO solution and gives them the audit logs they need. My company uses 1Password, and their license includes a free 1Password family license for employees.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I wouldn't mind Electron for applications I only use occasionally. What I don't want is something so heavy in my startup folder.

Exuma 5y ago

Disgusting

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

>This is the kind of shit I knew was going to happen when they raised money and entered the VC rat race years ago. Things we original users loved, like great apps, would be less of a priority. At least they weren't "joining" Google or Microsoft.

mcyukon 5y ago

This is the second time that 1Password Co has done something that I consider a negative... The first one being them "hiding" the standalone version purchase link. Doesn't give me much faith in their future plans which seen to be all about change for changes sake and extracting as much money out of customers as possible. That being said BitWarden uses Electron and Angular for their desktop apps as well.

gregoire 5y ago
Hiding the standalone version purchase link helps them justify the move to a subscription-only service: > The overwhelming majority of people (97% in fact) choose to subscribe to our new service and many of those who initially purchased a license later changed their mind and traded it in for a membership. (Source: https://1password.community/discussion/comment/601917/#Comment_601917 https://1password.community/discussion/comment/601917/#Comme...) Which is quite dishonest IMO.
- johnatwork 5y ago
  I, for one could not find the standalone. Now I feel like I've been had, and have a bad taste in my mouth. I'm moving to something else. Currently trying out Secrets for MacOS, it will be hard to work with my one PC as it's not crossplatform, but I think I can deal with that.

Ansil849 5y ago

Could someone give a bird's eye view summary of why 1Password moving to Electron is bad? Are there documented security risks, or is it more just a UX/UI aesthetic issue?

whitepoplar 5y ago
Memory bloat, for one.
brandon272 5y ago
It's popular to hate on Electron. The most common argument thrown around is "bloat". I also detect a perception among engineers that they consider Electron "the easy way out" vs. maintaining strictly native apps. Reminds me of the discourse around Sharkbite fittings on plumbing forums. I have to wonder what percentage of 1Password users know what languages or frameworks 1Password uses, much less care what languages or frameworks it uses? I assume it must be a fraction of 1%.
- kristofferR 5y ago
  They're gonna know as soon as they try to configure their settings: https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo/1 https://twitter.com/parrots/status/1425481491245670404/photo...
  - brandon272 5y ago
    Yes, if they are someone familiar with what Electron even is, which is not most people. And even among software engineers who might know and care about Electron, for what percentage of those people is Electron a dealbreaker?
- vmladenov 5y ago
  Electron apps are laggy and frequently lack native features whereas Cocoa apps often get them for free when the OS updates.
pseudalopex 5y ago

pjmlp 5y ago

Oh well. Thankfully I only use at company issued laptop.

wdb 5y ago

That's disappointing. Maybe I should give Secrets or Bitwarden a shot now. Wondering if they will refund my outstanding balance into cash

mb7733 5y ago
Doesn't Bitwarden also use electron?
yuuta 5y ago
Unfortunately, Bitwarden uses Electron as well.

hs86 5y ago

1Password and the Tower git client were somewhat similar: They started on native Mac first and years later introduced a native Windows version that lacked behind in features and polish. 1Password for Windows slowly(!) caught up, and even after all this investment, they decided that going for a web-based UI across all desktop OSes is the better solution. Tower did not change this: Their Windows version is still lacking, and I am still confused by their website about which features are Mac-only and which are also on Windows. Are they in a better position now for sticking with native apps? I stopped using them and moved to GitKraken that has the same UI across OSes. It is not as pleasing as that mature macOS version of Tower, but it is still better than constantly switching between an awesome and a "meh" app. Maybe cross-platform consistency is more important than having one main attraction and multiple sideshows.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
For a nice git client that’s fully native under both macOS and Windows, I strongly recommend Fork[1]. [1]: https://git-fork.com https://git-fork.com
- deergomoo 5y ago
  I’ve been very happy with Fork on macOS. Paid for it a few years ago and never been asked to pay for a new version, even though I totally would at this point. A couple of times when I’ve had support queries I’ve got quick email responses directly from the developer too.
  - filchermcurr 5y ago
    Throwing my support in for Fork as well. I've been following it since it was a free beta and it's always been a great product. As mentioned, the developer(s) are very responsive to e-mails and have been very nice when dealing with my stupid questions and suggestions. Definitely recommended.
jacobkg 5y ago
I’ve been really enjoying Sublime Merge as a replacement for Tower

DavideNL 5y ago

It’s sad to see good apps move to a subscription model, resulting in more profit, at the cost of losing customers with a limited budget. Yet another app that will no longer be accessible to many people.

tzs 5y ago

I'm somewhat baffled and amused by how much hate Electron gets on HN when an existing app moves to it or a new app uses it while at the same time whenever editors and/or IDEs are discussed Visual Studio Code (an Electron all) is massively praised.

ecf 5y ago
It’s pretty easy to understand. VSCode was an electron app from day one and never tried to be a first-class Mac app while the only reason 1Password is around today is because customers loved having a lightweight, native manager that always was quick to support new OS features. Essentially, native Mac apps switching to electron is a bait and switch.
- apple4ever 5y ago
  And I would say VSCode has its own annoyances but due to the fact there are few other good options (that are native Mac at least) its still praised.
  - Eric_WVGG 5y ago
    Nova is a good native Mac option
    - shawndellysse 5y ago
      I looked at it when it first came out but not since, does it have a typescript debugger yet?
      - Eric_WVGG 5y ago
        Yup, via LSP just like Visual Studio Code. There were a couple quirks in the early days but it improved at a rapid clip.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  I'm not a Mac user these days, what OS features will it be missing now?

siproprio 5y ago

on other news, is the onedrive app also electron as well? because I noticed it doubled the memory usage and slows my machine

blowski 5y ago

I just can’t get on the “let’s all hate Electron because it’s non-performant” bandwagon. I can understand why, say, a text editor in Electron might be frustrating. But in the case of 1Password, I spend barely time in the app itself so I’m really not bothered about speed. I’m bothered about security - it’s the reason I use 1Password. I’m bothered about pricing. I’m bothered about support across different operating systems. I’m bothered about features that make adoption easier. How are these things affected?

Turing_Machine 5y ago
>I can understand why, say, a text editor in Electron might be frustrating. Atom (my current daily driver) and Visual Studio Code are both Electron apps and are plenty fast.
- blowski 5y ago
  I didn't realise that! That's a happy surprise that further reinforces my view.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
I’m less concerned about performance and more about how Electron usage means that 1Password will be yet another app doing its own thing for UI instead of obeying platform conventions. For this kind of app, getting in, pulling the info you need, and getting out quickly is highly valuable and native apps lend themselves to that by virtue of not inventing their own rulesets. Electron apps also tend to be less than great at startup times. That said, performance becomes a consideration with any app that gets frequent use — one Electron app isn’t too bad, but when you’re running multiple it piles up and starts to turn your machine into a ball of tar, especially if you already have a bunch of browser tabs. This is particularly relevant on RAM limited machines… your 32GB+ RAM workstation isn’t going to sweat it, but your 8GB MacBook Air sure will.

aarpmcgee 5y ago

Wow, very disappointing. Will be researching alternatives and at this point, it’s a pretty sure bet that I will no longer be an AgileBits customer.

drcongo 5y ago

RIP 1P. It's been a long and painful death, but Agile Bits have been killing this app with every single thing they've done for the last 4 or 5 years.

asdff 5y ago

What was even the value proposition of using 1password over the native keychain access on mac? Generating passwords? Safari does this now (albeit always ignores the website's specific password rules and gets it wrong most of the time)

kristofferR 5y ago
Two-factor authentication support is really nice, the code is auto-filled when you fill your password. It auto-unlocks through your Apple Watch too.
riobard 5y ago
Better UX. System keychain UI is very primitive…
macintux 5y ago
I keep far more than just passwords: family SSNs, software license keys, license plate numbers and VINs, meatspace passcodes, etc.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
One is vault sharing. Most companies I've worked with will give me a corporate 1Password vault that snaps nearly into my system with no conflicts. Another is MFA support, native keychain doesn't support that at all.
- weikju 5y ago
  macOS Monterey's keychain (as well as iOS 15) will support MFA, though
gumby 5y ago
Sharing cross platform. Also I share some vaults (with my kids, and also with my aging parents). But this is such a step backwards it doesn’t seem worth continuing with 1Password, after more than a dozen years.
kall 5y ago
If it‘s worth the effort to you, you can try to amend the password rules here: https://github.com/apple/password-manager-resources/blob/main/quirks/password-rules.json https://github.com/apple/password-manager-resources/blob/mai...

riobard 5y ago

I'll recommend Elpass as a much, much better alternative. Completely native to Mac and iOS, and sync via iCloud. https://elpass.app https://elpass.app

monocularvision 5y ago
Any suggestions for a family looking to share some passwords and not others? This, for me, is the killer feature for 1Password’s subscription service and why I happily pay them each year.
macintux 5y ago
Thanks, I’ve been fine paying a subscription but I don’t like the trends.
moepstar 5y ago
Uh, i guess you're talking about Enpass? I've switched from 1Password to Enpass as well, however my experience is a bit... mixed... Not sure i'd fault something specific, however the overall polish 1Password has still isn't there. I'm using Enpass on Linux, Mac and iOS - my SO still has an 1Password 4.something install (i think) on her Windows computer. If that one is going to somehow "expire", i'm going to selfhost Bitwarden probably... Edit: ok, wow - there really is an App called Elpass - TIL... Edit2: sure, bring on the downvotes :S i guess no one ever naively assumed that 2 letters almost next to each other could have been a typo. To further explain why i assumed it was a typo is because i've never, ever heard of Elpass before - all the while being a user of password managers for years. Even more so when researching my options about 2 years ago before switching to Enpass and never heard of Elpass being mentioned, not even once. I suppose it is pretty new-ish then? Or a hidden gem? Or gosh both?
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
if anyone is wondering, ElPass’s 1Password import works really well. Includes one-time MFA settings! (no secure documents, though) first impressions, massively faster than 1Password 7. Feels "lean."
Hackbraten 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arminiusreturns 5y ago

Bitwarden for shared environments, keepassxc for local. You're welcome.

Railworks2 5y ago
Go check what Bitwarden clients use. You're welcome.
- arminiusreturns 5y ago
  Oh no, I had only ever used their web interface. Thank you for the heads up. I personally refuse to install anything electron or nodejs on my systems, so I guess I won't be using the desktop bitwarden client anytime soon. Are there any good bitwarden alternatives? (shared env pass managers)

throwawaycuriou 5y ago

Upside: Linux users have a client that's easier kept in sync with features and development on Win/Mac.

1--6zVa-E 5y ago
They could’ve kept Windows & Linux in sync and kept Mac separate. As they said themselves, “Mac has always held a special place in [their] heart.”

knodi 5y ago

I really don't want to move away from 1Password but they're really forcing my departure here.

TriStateFarmer 5y ago

Can we start talking in terms of "Environmental Impact"? Work out the energy use per hour of the old vs the new system * number of installs. See how much extra millions of tons of carbon 1password is spewing into the air because of their technology change! Reminder: when a company chooses a technology stack that suits them (the developers of the software) and NOT the end users, then things tend to go badly.

cyberge99 5y ago
Textbook case (culprit): Evernote
TriStateFarmer 5y ago
How can a password manager require 80 threads to run on a Mac?Old version required 12.
0x0nyandesu 5y ago
Typical tech company will use 90% of it's energy running the HVAC unit so that Susan in accounting stops complaining about being cold but people will freak out cause the app uses slightly more energy.
- TriStateFarmer 5y ago
  "people freak out cause the app uses slightly more energy" Multiply the "slightly" by 100 million installs!
  - johnatwork 5y ago
    Man, this is like when someone was arguing with me that Right on Reds is not that impactful to the environment, they said something like "Oh on average it only cuts off 30 seconds off of someone's commute." ...Ooookay, now times that by everyone commuting.
    - 0x0nyandesu 5y ago

occz 5y ago

What a shame, I liked 1Password in particular because of the high quality of their native apps.

dang 5y ago

Ongoing and related: 1Password 8 will be subscription only and won’t support local vaults - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28145247 Recent and related: 1password is considering a self-hosted option to store vaults - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28104134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28104134 - Aug 2021 (215 comments)

fdgdfgdfgaaa 5y ago

Trusting any cloud based password manager to me seems absurd and stupid.

nilstycho 5y ago
Why? Do you not trust that your data on the cloud is encrypted?
mcyukon 5y ago
Which is the reason why some of us are upset. Before version 8 of 1Password you could have a local database that you could manually and properly sync to different places if you so chose. And backups. With 1Password 8, you have no choice but to upload everything to their cloud. And if you don't trust their backups online, and want to follow the 1-2-3 rule you have to spend a lot of time finding the local cache 1Password keeps so you can make a backup by syncing a folder, or use the export feature which doesn't create a perfect mirror of what is stored in 1Password when it comes to tags, links, documents
1--6zVa-E 5y ago
Holding this opinion seems kind of absurd. It’s quite easy to put trust in reputable password managers like 1Password and Bitwarden.

api 5y ago

Uninstall...

johnnybronson90 5y ago

Why do you even care.

pier25 5y ago

Why are they even using Electron instead of native web views? In my experience it's perfectly fine to use a web app for your UI. What's not OK is to bundle Chrome and Node in your app.

Scheris 5y ago

Planning on moving to Apple Keychain once the releases in the fall are out, as it’ll have 2FA support. Only Electron app that’s been half decent is VS Code, but that’s a full blown editor. Wasting RAM on a password manager due to Electron is a no go for me.

raydev 5y ago

Interesting that raising $100mm in funding isn't enough to pay a few dedicated macOS developers.

ShakataGaNai 5y ago

Yes, Electron has a bad wrap. In the early days it was a horrific ram hog and even today it still can be for certain poorly optimized apps. But any company today that spends a little time optimizing their application ends up reasonably performant and using reasonable system resources. At the end of the day, It's a lot of investment to build an app native for macos, linux and windows. Plus the web. Plus CLI. Plus multiple native mobile platforms. If you can trade 75% of that out for a single "platform", then you can focus all your engineers on the same thing. More features, sooner, and available for everyone - no more 2nd class platforms. Almost of the core applications that drive basically everything in my life, including Brave, 1Password, Inkdrop, VS Code, Email, Office Suite, Slack, Discord... are either directly in browser (Ex Gmail & Outlook.com), Electron or some similar "browser in a box" type solutions. Yes, I am unusual in that I work on Mac, Windows and Linux machines on a regular basis. However it's amazing that all my apps work the same everywhere I go. You know what else is awesome about that? I can recommend those apps to everyone, regardless of what platform you're on. No more "Just use X? Oh you're on a mac... uh... sorry no idea". Ask me for help? Cool, works the same everywhere so I can help you.

manigandham 5y ago
> "it's amazing that all my apps work the same everywhere I go" Exactly. I vastly prefer this than the slight (if any) performance advantage with native apps, and I've used plenty of slow native apps too. Bad code is bad code and it's strange how much dogmatic hate Electron gets on HN.
johnatwork 5y ago
For some, we don't need more features, we just need reliability and speed. I don't care if my IDE takes an extra beat or so. But I want and need my password right fast, as soon as I need it. Every slow app that I use is by necessity not choice. Slack would be the first thing I uninstall as soon as my work doesn't need it, it would honestly be my first action.

lupinglade 5y ago

See ya!

wdr1 5y ago

Is the hate around Electron just due to bloat? TBH, I don't care if there's no security ramifications.

1--6zVa-E 5y ago
Electron does potentially have some security implications. Although, as others have pointed out, the 1Password development team likely has enough knowledge and manpower to keep up.

akfanta 5y ago

I have been using this app for 9 years because of its polished UX. I don't even mind paying for subscription model because of it, but this is killing its top selling point for me. Bye bye 1p.

darnfish 5y ago

I downloaded the beta and it works fine, it feels native enough for me not to want to switch over. I really do hate poorly implemented Electron apps though, Discord is okay but Slack is terrible and I'm a Sublime Text user until I can get an M1 to handle that slow asf VS Code cold start (and sometimes hot depending on how many things you have going on)

Khaine 5y ago

This is disappointing. One of the reasons 1Password is much loved is because it's a high quality native application. It fits perfectly into macOS. Even the best electron apps, suck as macOS (or windows or linux) citizens. There are little things that don't just work properly.

gregors 5y ago

Electron is really a subpar user experience. The polish of the mac app was amazing. I can't convey how disappointed I am.

grumpy-cowboy 5y ago

Nice a password manager taking 1GB of RAM and 20% of CPU.