1 password Released early access version of 1Password 8 for iOS on Wednesday, which brings a redesigned interface and new wallpaper for iPhone and iPad users. The new version of the app, which 1Password says will eventually make its way to all supported platforms, was available in early access mode. For Mac since Augustand was Released for Windows in November.
As an old user of 1Password 7, the redesign was immediately apparent when I opened the beta version of the app. As far as I can tell, almost every icon has been changed to be more fun and colorful, and the interface looks more modern now.
1Password 7 opened on the Favorites screen with a few recently used passwords. Other than marking or unmarking logins as favorites, there wasn’t much you could do to customize the screen. This has always been a bit frustrating for me, because I basically had no screen use and would immediately bounce back to research.
On the other hand, 1Password 8 has a home screen that allows you to access things like your vaults, categories, and lists of recently created or modified passwords. You can also change them to suit how you organize and access your passwords – if you’re a big user of categories, favorites, and tags, you can move these options up. If you dump everything in one folder, you can hide everything except All Items.
The old (current, good) version of the app would let you know if one of your passwords had been compromised, and could alert you if the login you were viewing had a reused password, but there wasn’t a single screen that let you manage public security your. The new version of the iOS app adapts the watchtower section of the mobile desktop version, which also gives you a comprehensive degree of security.
There was some controversy surrounding 1Password 8, after the company announced that its Mac app’s user interface would be powered by Electron (the web browser technology behind apps like Slack, Evernote and Discord) rather than native code like SwiftUI or AppKit. Some users are concerned that the change would make the password manager more resource intensive to run, or that it would look like a real Mac app. Whatever you feel about this change, it’s not really a factor with this iOS app 1Password said It uses SwiftUI for the interface, and Rust for the kernel.
Of course, there are other reasons why you might not want to use the early access version of the password manager. While it’s been fine for me so far, there are likely to be some bugs for testers to pick up on. If your phone’s password manager is very important to your work and/or life, it’s best to wait until an official release, especially since this update is a big change from the previous one. If you’re okay with increasing the odds of volatility, and want to try the redesign yourself as soon as possible, you can join TestFlight using the link at 1Password blog post.
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