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1Password 2.9 and the Agile Keychain

by Brett Terpstra Oct 9th 2008 at 12:00PM

We may have mentioned it one or two (dozen) times, but 1Password is a great solution for securely managing passwords, credit cards and notes on a Mac (and recently the iPhone). If you're a 1Password fan, be sure to check out the 2.9 release from last weekend; it has a pretty huge new feature. For quite a while now there have been grumblings about the OS X Keychain being a bit of a beast, especially when handling large amounts of data. Rather than waiting out Apple for new improvements to the Keychain system, the stalwart coders at Agile Web Solutions decided to write their own.


If you dig into the Keychain section of the preferences in 1Password 2.9, you'll find an option to "Switch to Agile Keychain Format." What's the difference? First, it allows easy file-based synchronization, making possible non-MobileMe solutions for syncing up multiple Macs. Further, it maintains speedy access even when it contains gigs of data, as well as supporting much higher levels of encryption. Sounds good to me.

If you're ready to switch your keychain format, head over to the developer's blog for detailed instructions, and read up on the various options for automatic sync between Macs. 1Password 2.9 is a free upgrade for existing users, and new users can grab a free trial. A single license runs $39.95USD with a family pack available for $59.95USD. For the full changelog for this release, check the version history page.



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We may have mentioned it one or two (dozen) times, but 1Password is a great solution for securely managing passwords, credit cards and...
 

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homan2

Can't wait until it can sync automatically to my1password. Stellar program, and even if you have no use for it, buy it anyway just because the support is stellar.

October 12 2008 at 9:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bc

just did the update to 2.9

should have carefully read the note about Leopard & Firewall issues with keychain beforehand! I inadvertently introduced the permissions problem mentioned in the notes :( but no problem, I followed the instructions on the developer's blog and fixed everything. (thanks Dave!)

I've been using 1Password with iPhone, but had been leery of turning on keychain syncing via MobileMe to sync to my other Mac because of some other unrelated OS X Keychain headaches in Leopard before. today's experience reminded me of those, so I this new Agile format is a welcome development.

October 09 2008 at 7:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Christian A. Strømmen

You know, even though I have Keychain synching turned on with MobileMe it never seems to be synching 1Password. I didn't even realize it was supposed to as I never really thought about 1Password using the Keychain.

October 09 2008 at 2:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Christian A. Strømmen's comment
David Teare

By default the 1Password keychain is not configured to sync through MobileMe. You can change this by going to 1Password > Preferences > Keychain and clicking "Change Auto-Lock and .Mac Settings". It is still called .Mac in Keychain Access so we continued to use the .Mac terminology in this window.

Just to be clear, this setting is only for the OS X Keychain. If you want to use MobileMe to sync the Agile Keychain, you can use iDisk.

Cheers!

--Dave Teare
Co-author of 1Password

October 09 2008 at 2:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jash Sayani

I am happy with KeePassX !!

October 09 2008 at 1:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Teare

Thanks for the post Brett! It feels great to finally publish what we talked about over a few beers @ WWDC this summer. It feels like it took forever to complete this, but we wanted to make sure we got it right.

Just to be clear, the OS X Keychain has treated us well over the years and it is still fully supported in 1Password. For those happy with it, there is no need to switch.

The Agile Keychain was added for those who did not want to sync with MobileMe, or had issues when doing so. Also, it will enable new features going forward such as support for attachments as well as syncing between the iPhone version of 1Password and iDisk.

Cheers!

--Dave Teare
Co-author of 1Password

October 09 2008 at 1:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Todd

Keychain stuff is a bit esoteric for me. Are there any possible issues involved with using the Agile format?

October 09 2008 at 1:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Todd's comment
David Teare

See https://kb.agile.ws/wiki/agile/KeychainComparison for a quick/high level comparison of the two.

While I don't expect any issues w/ switching to the Agile format, you can switch back to the OS X Keychain at any time. Once you change to the Agile Keychain the button in the 1Password > Preferences > Keychain window changes to "Switch Back to OS X Keychain Format...", so you are not 'locked in' so to speak.

Cheers!

--Dave Teare
Co-author of 1Password

October 09 2008 at 2:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Todd

Thanks Dave. I'm looking forward to trying out the agile format.

October 09 2008 at 2:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JeffEd

You should probably post about the Apple event coming up next week.

And though I hope you are right about a netbook, I highly doubt it.

And I'm sorry this is so off-topic and unrelated to 1Password.

October 09 2008 at 12:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Big John

I'll have to give this a try. Thanks for the post -- I rarely open the 1Password program proper, so I didn't even know there was a new release?

October 09 2008 at 12:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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