31 Days, 31 Products: 1Password

Day 03: 1Password

This post is part of a larger series where for 31 days I’m posting a story about a particular product or service I’ve come to enjoy.

Usernames and passwords are a broken system, yet sadly one we’re likely to still be using for a while to come. 1Password is tool that can help you generate and retrieve good (hard to crack) and unique passwords for every site you use. With apps for every platform and features like browser extensions with form fill, thumbprint identification on iOS and security warnings about hacked sites, I find 1Password to be a must have app and one of the first apps I install on a new machine.

I’ve even enjoy using 1Password to share stuff. For example, at CocoaHeads we share a group vault for a handful of credentials shared via Dropbox. Now I know they just introduced a new team sharing feature so maybe this is a little old school, but it’s working for us and we like it.

My biggest feature request for 1Password is to get something more advanced than the master password for my Mac. Some thumbprint hardware would be cool, or maybe even a face+voice recognition alternative. This would obviously get some push if Apple introduced a native thumbprint scanner on their Macbook line. Maybe some day…

1Password can be bought through the Mac App Store or their site. A Mac license costs $49 (with a free trial available) and the iOS client is a free download on the App Store with a $9.99 in-app purchase for some more advanced features. Windows and Android versions are also available for similar pricing; again, see their store page for details.