I despise Electron apps. What is the point of having a superior operating system (macOS) if every app that resides on it is nobbled by not supporting basic elements of the underpinning system?

I see the short-term reason that developers must use: standardised code, cheaper for development, most users don’t know/care.

I also caution about the long-term losses: the damage to brand reputation, the disappointment of ‘power users’ and the risks that can occur from alienating this group.

It’s also hard not to see that this switch to Electron came shortly after 1Password accepted a huge venture capital stake. Investors want their returns.

Users who do care, such as myself, are the proselytising acolytes, however. I’ve recommended 1Password many times over the years, as well as being a paying subscriber of their Families edition more recently, after having bought multiple versions of their earlier standalone apps.

Rui Carmo at The Tao of Mac echoes my sentiments:

This shift away from fully native apps and the fact that they are removing iCloud support from version 8 in order to enforce the use of their cloud sync service (in an obvious lock-in ploy) was the last straw, so I just downloaded Secrets, paid for the Premium version ($19.99 for each platform) and imported all my 1Password data into it.

I have access to Secrets for macOS through my Setapp subscription. So I can try this out for a while, and if I like it I’m happy to buy the iOS version.

My current 1Password subscription is valid through to April next year so there’s no immediate pressure for me to shut down the 1Password account.