[rickharrison]

1password has progressively gotten worse every year for the past 5-10. 1password team if you are reading this, please stop making your software worse. Search which was great for years is now terrible and has jumbled results.

Some software should just be considered "done" and never changed again. 1Password is one of those things.

[ivan_gammel]

I don’t really understand this kind of comments that complain without any specifics. Worse how? I use two family subscriptions and a corporate one for many years and haven’t noticed any regression in functionality or UX. They release time to time minor quality of life improvements and continue supporting modern platforms. 1P7 to 1P8 upgrade went without any problems on all platforms I use. IMO this is the best password manager on the market by many measures.

What is your experience exactly?

[MrDarcy]

For me, I paid full price for the app. I attached many important documents such as my ID, SSN Card, my original birth cert, even the deed to my house. If I pass my wife knows where to get this info.

When my son was born I went to add his birth cert and SSN. I couldn’t. The “attach file” button is still there but it simply doesn’t work any more.

After hours of troubleshooting I finally found a discussion on their own support form where they acknowledged they explicitly disabled this feature. The solution is to switch to a paid subscription.

I’ll never buy software from them again. That’s just one example. They’ve removed similar functionality from cloud sync services to compel users to buy a subscription.

[maigret]

Sad indeed but the days of 0 interest rates are gone. Plus, software engineers in many countries are now massively more expensive.

[TeMPOraL]

Software that's done doesn't need as many software engineers to look after it.

[acdha]

They have a PR department, don’t give your time bro bono to spin it for them. With as many customers as they have, they’re in no danger of not being able to pay developers.

[wingerlang]

Every couple of months, without fail, the chrome extension starts failing. It gets to the point where I see the "current popup style" and just know that I have to ignore it, open the actual 1Password app (and login there), and THEN go back to chrome and open the extension again.

Some periods of time I simply went to copy from the app itself because the extension didn't work.

Been a paid customer for over a decade, and I originally bought it because the apps were so nice and they really did work 100%. The last couple of years have been painful at times though.

[rickharrison]

- 1Password used to support Dropbox syncing without a subscription. They allowed you to keep using the app, but they removed support for auto-filling logins from dropbox in Safari or Firefox. You could only auto-fill from vaults that you paid monthly for. Whatever, they win, I started paying monthly.

- They broke search in the past few months. I have multiple accounts with the same service (i.e. google, mercury) for personal and business. Now when searching it displays gibberish like 2FA backup codes from the notes instead of just having `${title} - ${username}` like it had for years

- They completely changed the left bar and moved around the entire UI multiple times. Credit cards used to be a simple click on the left side. Now I have to click "All Items" on the left side, then find the dropdown for "All Categories", click it, scroll down to Credit Cards and click on that.

It really comes down to the fact that it's a password manager. All it has to do is store passwords and fill them in when I need to sign in somewhere. Why has the UI fundamentally changed multiple times over the years throwing away all learned user behavior.

EDIT: There's also just the intangibles. I can't always remember specifics, but I "Feel" like 1password has been fighting me for years. I don't feel that way about many other pieces of software I use. 1Password just feels hostile in how they change/update things.

[hakanderyal]

Safari extension works half the time at best. Sometimes it doesn't start working without restarting the browser after it crashes.

Cancelled my sub last night after many years.

I don't mind the price, or electron or anything, I just wanted it to fill the passwords in my browser reliably.

[laborcontract]

I feel your pain. It used to reliably save and fill passwords. It’s a huge mess that doesn’t even work.

[vintagedave]

I can give specifics.

* Their syncing broke, and their support promised that buying a subscription would make it work. I did. It didn't. A year later I managed to get it fixed. I'm now on a permanent subscription for something I used to own -- that's not bad by itself, but the feeling I've been taken advantage of, and promised something that was false, leaves a bad taste.

* Syncing sometimes doesn't work anyway. I might add an account on my laptop and not be able to access it on my phone for a day or more.

* It's much buggier. Sometimes the Mac app just doesn't appear when you click the menu bar icon (this happened to me just a minute ago.) You have to right-click and select Open 1Password to get the full app, after which the menu bar app will now work. Sometimes. Right now, it's not no matter what I do. Why? No idea, it's random.

* Basic password features seem missing. There is _still_ no way to edit in a 'Remember me' checkbox on a login form. I would like 1P to set that checkbox.

* The UX design gets worse each release. In 1Password 8 they removed the useful menu in the Mac menu bar. I can't check what it is now because of the bug above, but it used to show a list of passwords. Now it has some kind of pseudo-intelligent other menu that has to be invoked via a shortcut and the Mac menu bar app actually does almost nothing useful.

* Not to mention their UX design which comes from the "hide buttons until you mouse over and click a button you didn't realise was there" school of intuitiveness.

* More UX: the iOS app now has a list of favorites, but it's almost impossible to get the info you want. Take a bank card: you can tap it in the list to show the name, card number, etc, but if you want the ATM pin -- which is the number I most forget, and the useful one because my card number is saved everywhere that uses it -- you have to dig into the item itself. How? Via a tiny, tiny untappable arrow.

Worst is that interactions with them show an attitude that they think they're building a better and better app each release. They're not. I cannot wait until I can move away to the new Passwords app.

[fckgw]

1Password has gotten way, way better than it was a few years ago in my opinion. Tons of new features and the redesign a couple years ago was a big improvement.

[jen20]

The electron rewrite was a significant step backwards regardless of features and quality. I cannot wait to ditch 1P.

[e40]

How was it a step backward? I have noticed zero downsides to 8 compared to the previous version. I'm comparing the current version to the last version 7 I used. This electron hate is such a headscratcher for me.

[sgarland]

Generally speaking, Electron apps are larger and slower than their native cousins. I just checked on my M1 Mac, and between the Safari extension (which somehow consumes more memory than the app itself) the main app, and various helpers / renderers, it clocks in at 410 MB of RAM. I'll give you that it's also acting as an SSH Agent, but that still seems rather large for the functionality.

Personally, I noticed a slowdown in responsiveness immediately when switching from 7 to 8.

[lightwords]

It's clocking in at 120MB on my machine and launches instantly. I don't get this blind hate for Electron, it has made software runnable on more platform than ever with less development resources.

[Washuu]

It takes 10+ seconds to load the 1Password extension window in Firefox after some upgrade this year. They really screwed something up.

[e40]

Loads instantly for me on macOS.

[xnyan]

I hear this, and I believe people, but it leaves me in a confused state because I don't understand. I (think) I've used them all, and the only password manager that is in the same class or better is bitwarden, which is also web/electron.

[jen20]

Previous versions of 1p are an existence proofs of something better!

[fourfour3]

I agree with this a lot.

I miss 1Password Mini in particular still (and no, Quick Access is not a replacement).

[klabb3]

> Tons of new features and the redesign

After LastPass lost it I shopped around and avoided 1Password precisely because it looks and is marketed like typical feature-oriented apps powered by VC valuations and growth metrics. I do not like trigger happy product management near critical single-purpose software. It’s already quite challenging, because pw managers need (1) offline support (2) a sync protocol that’s virtually bug free and (3) state of the art crypto/security and (4) wide cross platform support.

I prefer such an app to sit basically dormant until there’s a new industry development (like passkeys) to keep up with the times. And even then, those features should only be added thoughtfully with a defensive mindset to ensure stability going forward.

So tldr, your stated benefits are in fact the very reason a lot of people don’t like it.

[lghh]

I don't understand this sentiment. I'm not attacking, I'm trying to understand.

So if there's opportunity for a feature that adds real value for many people to an application without it affecting the core of the product, it shouldn't be added? I can add passwords and unlock websites just as quickly with 1Password as I could 8 years ago. Why does adding other useful, related features make a difference?

[vintagedave]

Because they keep on changing the product at the same time. If they added value and left what worked still working, it'd be great. But they change things, and it's buggy, and the UX is worse, and I just want the nice productive utility I had a few years ago.

You say you can do things as fast as you could eight years ago -- but I can _not._

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40644525

[klabb3]

It’s based on experience that more features tend to break functionality, change user workflows and changes in product strategy, sometimes even companies get acquired or shut down things.

Of course, these things can happen to any product in theory, but with experience I’ve developed a bit of a radar for what kind of company is behind a product based on their design, website, marketing etc.

> Why does adding other useful, related features make a difference?

Like what? I’ve had the same experience with 2 pw managers for probably a decade, and the only noticeable change has been passkeys. Note that for me it’s personal use only though.

[e40]

I completely disagree. Yeah, the launch of 1PW8 was rocky. They didn't have feature parity on some devices (iOS). I waited a good while to update and when I did I had an issue with my Yubikey, so I went back to 1PW7 on iOS, but it was fantastic on macOS--way better than 7. After a short while, they fixed the Yubikey login issue with 8 on iOS and I have had exactly zero issues on macOS or iOS since, for about a year(ish).

Another data point: my 85 year old mother used to have issues with 7. She'd get confused about things. With 8, it's been clear sailing for her. That's pretty impressive to me.

[pasc1878]

1password 8 on iOS is fine and I note no issues with it, it just works.

On macOS 1pw 7 worked with no issues, 1pw 8 doesn't

However the big issue is that 1pw8 requires you to use their cloud - so if someone takes over the company and changes things or the company goes bust or even if the company's servers get hit by DDOS you lose all things. 1pw7 allowed you to keep the main db on anything and use multiple sync mechanism. For example you could keep the data all on machines you own, you could be a business and that would matter for security. Yes cloud etc is secure but there are cases where you don't want things to be anywhere not on your machines.

[pupppet]

I dislike the new search so much, just make search work like it does in every other application. If you're reinventing the wheel for something so basic that's the first sign you're doing something very wrong.

[yreg]

>1password has progressively gotten worse every year for the past 5-10.

You can still use the standalone 1Password 6…

[AlexandrB]

A lot of the browser integrations are broken if you run older releases I think. Even 7 doesn't work with Chrome anymore.

[gregoriol]

I still use 1Password 7

[AlexandrB]

Yup. Wish I could go back to 6 because 7 feels noticeable slower, but 8 is a non-starter due to the lack of self-hosting or local vault options. I also hate how a bunch of "babysitting" features are forced on you in later (after 5 or so) 1Password releases. I don't want Watchtower to be pegged to the top of the sidebar - but there it is anyways. I don't want to set a password hint for the master password, but I'm forced to regardless.

[gregoriol]

Yeah, Watchtower is horrible, also search is sometimes really bad when you have a lot of different logins for the same domain