On Wednesday, 1Password, a well-known password manager, released an early beta version of 1Password 8 for iOS, bringing a redesigned interface and backend for iPhone and iPad users. 1Password says all platform versions will be updated, with the macOS platform version already available last August and the Windows version released last November.
Compared to 1Password 7, the new version has almost all the icons upgraded to become more interesting and colorful, and the interface now feels more modern.
1Password 8 has a home screen that gives you access to things like your repository, categories, and a list of recently created or modified passwords. You can also change it to suit the way you organize and access your passwords – if you’re a big user of categories, favorites, and tags, you can move these options to the top. If you throw everything into a folder, you can hide everything except “All Items”.
There has been some controversy surrounding 1Password 8 as the company announced that the user interface for its Mac app would be driven by Electron (the web browser technology behind apps like Slack, Evernote, and Discord) rather than by native code like SwiftUI or AppKit.
Some users worry that the change will make the password manager run more resource-intensive, or that it doesn’t feel like a real Mac application. Whatever your opinion on the change, it’s not really a factor for this iOS app, with 1Password saying its interface uses SwiftUI and the core uses Rust.