Make Your Life Simpler

In the next several pages, I tell you about tags, favorites, advanced searches, smart folders, and other tools that you could use to manage your 1Password data. But you don’t have to use any of them, and most people—even power users—will merely waste time and effort in the care and feeding of information that can take care of itself.

I have well over 1,800 items in my copy of 1Password (including more than 900 logins), accumulated over 14 years. I don’t use smart folders, tags, or favorites—a simple search virtually always turns up exactly what I’m looking for—and I feel as though the time I could pour into organizing and categorizing would be better spent doing something enjoyable or enriching.

So, before you do any organizing at all, try using 1Password for a while without it, merely searching (see Perform a Basic Search) for what you need. If you find that searching isn’t cutting it for you, then start using the other tools—slowly. Don’t overdo it just because you can.

Nevertheless, even if you take no action now, you should be aware of what 1Password can do—especially how it sorts and displays your data—so you’re never confused about where something may be.

Understand the Sidebar Sections

1Password’s sidebar (Figure 27) lets you filter the display of your stored items in the main list. Click a header (denoted by a tiny arrow to its right) to expand or collapse it. Click a non-header item in the sidebar, and only the matching items appear in the list.

Here’s what you’ll find in the sidebar:

• All Vaults or a vault name: This control at the top lets you filter the display to show items from all vaults or only a particular vault. Click All Vaults, or the vault name, to show or hide your list of vaults. With the list displayed, click a specific vault to select it and show only the items within it. (Click All Vaults in the list to display all items from all vaults.)

• All Items: Click here to see all items, from all categories, except those in the Trash.

• Favorites: You can manually mark your most important 1Password items (of any sort) with a star to designate them as favorites. See Use Favorites.

• Watchtower: The seven items listed under the Watchtower heading identify logins that may be insecure or in need of changing for one reason or another. I cover all these in detail later, in Perform a Password Security Audit.

• Categories: For each type of item you’ve stored in 1Password (such as logins, secure notes, credit cards, and standalone passwords) you’ll see the corresponding category in the sidebar. 1Password shows several common categories by default, even if you don’t have any items yet, but less-used categories (such as Memberships and Outdoor Licenses) appear only after you add items in those categories.

  You can’t add your own categories, rename or reorder categories, or change which category an item belongs to. That’s because each category corresponds to one of 1Password’s built-in templates; they’re not merely arbitrary labels. (That’s what tags are for, as we’ll see in a moment.)

• Smart folders (Mac only, and only when a standalone vault is selected): Although not shown in Figure 27 (above), if you create smart folders in the Mac app, they appear in a Smart Folders group in the 1Password sidebar. They’re not really folders but rather saved searches. For example, you could do an advanced search for all logins created within the last 30 days and save it as a smart folder; its contents would change dynamically. (See Perform an Advanced Search and Use Smart Folders, later.)

• Tags: Tags are words or phrases you create to describe items that share some characteristic (see Use Tags, ahead in this chapter). An item may have multiple tags (such as Work, Important, and Marketing), and tags can be nested inside one another.

• Trash: Just as in the Finder or Windows Explorer, the Trash holds items you delete until you’re sure you’ll never need them again, at which point you can empty the Trash, deleting them permanently. Read Use the Trash, later in this chapter, for details.

Use Favorites

If you have a few 1Password items that you use frequently and want to be able to find as quickly as possible, you can mark them as favorites. This feature identifies important items with a star and displays them in the Favorites category, which appears at the top of your sidebar, at the top of the list in 1Password mini, and in a prominent spot in 1Password for iOS/iPadOS and Android.

To mark an item as a favorite, select it in the main 1Password app and click the star icon, which is found on the toolbar on a Mac, or under the item’s name in Windows. (No need to click Edit first.) To remove it from your favorites list, click the star icon again.

There’s nothing more to say about favorites, but I’ll give you one piece of advice: use this feature sparingly. If you have more than a handful of favorites, they’ll get lost in the list, defeating the purpose. If you need to identify a larger number of frequently used items, tags are a better choice.

Use Tags

Tags let you identify items that share certain characteristics, but they don’t impose a rigid structure—an item can have multiple tags at once, and tags may be nested (to create “families” of related tags) if you like.

Adjust the Sort Order

Your sorting options vary depending on your version of 1Password and which layout you’re using:

• On a Mac: The items in 1Password’s main list are initially sorted by title, in ascending alphabetical order. To change the sort order, click the tiny heading above the main list (for example, “45 items sorted by Title”) to display a pop-up menu (Figure 28) with other sort options, which vary according to the type(s) of item you’re viewing.

  

  You can choose from various sorting criteria, such as Category, Date Created, and Password Age. You can also reverse the sort order by choosing Alphabetically Reversed (or a comparable command, such as Oldest to Most Recent) from the bottom of the menu. Although most of these sorting options are self-explanatory, I’ll call your attention later to a few that you may find especially useful.

• In Windows: Click Sort at the top of the item list and then choose Title, Category, Date Created, Date Modified, or Vault from the pop-up menu.

Perform a Basic Search

Most of the time, you can find any item in 1Password by typing a few letters of the item you’re searching for in the Search field. Matching results are displayed instantly. However, the details of where and how 1Password searches depend on where you’re conducting the search.

Perform an Advanced Search

I find basic searches to be adequate nearly all the time, but if you have a large number of items in 1Password and need greater specificity, the Advanced Search feature (Mac only, at this point) can help. To perform an advanced search, do any of the following:

• Choose Edit > Find > Show Search Options.

• Press ⌘-Option-Control-F.

• Choose File > New Smart Folder. (This option is available only when a local, standalone vault is selected.)

When you do any of these things, additional controls (Figure 29) appear at the top of the window. (The Cancel and Save buttons shown here appear only when a local, standalone vault is selected.)

If you’ve used a smart folder in the Finder, a smart playlist in Music or iTunes, or a smart mailbox in Mail, this interface should look familiar—you can build complex statements describing what you’re looking for. I won’t cover all the details because they’re largely self-explanatory, but the key features are:

• Where to search: From the Search pop-up menu at the top, choose All Items or a specific category, such as Logins or Secure Notes.

• Fields and matches: You can choose from dozens of fields in the pop-up menu shown as [Title] in Figure 29, above. Depending on what you choose there, you’ll have various options in the second pop-up menu in that row, and often a text field. This allows you to create search criteria such as [Title] [contains] Apple, [Updated (days ago)] [is greater than] 5, or [Number of URLs] [is less than or equal to] 3.

You can add more criteria to narrow the search further by clicking the plus button on the right side. If you Option-click the plus button on the right side, you can add grouped or even nested search criteria. Once you’ve done this, use the pop-up menu to specify whether a match occurs if any of the criteria in that group are met, or all of them are. There’s also a None option, to find all the items that don’t match your search criteria.

As soon as you fill out this form and press Tab or Return, 1Password displays matching results.

If you have a local, standalone vault selected and want to save this search so you can repeat it later with a click (even if you didn’t initially choose File > New Smart Folder), click the Save button and type a name. 1Password turns your search into a smart folder, which appears in the sidebar.

Use Smart Folders

Once you’ve saved an advanced search as a smart folder (again, a Mac-only, local-vault-only feature), you can click the smart folder in the sidebar to display current matching results.

You can rename a smart folder by selecting it, clicking it again, and then pausing a moment until the name field becomes editable. Or, right-click (or Control-click) it and choose Rename. To delete a smart folder, select it and press the Delete key; then click Delete to confirm.

To edit an existing smart folder, right-click (or Control-click) it and choose Edit Smart Folder from the pop-up menu. The advanced search controls appear, with the criteria from your smart folder already entered. You can then adjust them to your liking and click Save.

Use Previously Generated Passwords

When you use 1Password to generate a new password, most of the time you’ll save it in a login item right after you fill it in on a webpage—or, if it’s a standalone password, you might create it and name it within the 1Password app. But if you forget to save a login, if a website doesn’t trigger the automatic login saving feature for some reason, if you create a new password in 1Password mini and forget to edit its title later, or if any other user or computer error occurs, you may find yourself not knowing the password you picked. So 1Password builds in safeguards to retain your generated passwords, just in case.

You can find previously generated passwords in any of three places:

• Passwords: This sidebar category in the main 1Password app and 1Password mini lists every password that you’ve created in the main 1Password app, as well as those you’ve created and filled or copied in 1Password mini. Each password appears as a separate (and editable) item. In the main 1Password app, to convert one of these to a login (in order to add fields such as Username), click Convert to Login.

• Individual login (and other) items: If you save a login item (or other item that includes a password, such as an email account), and later change its password in 1Password (see Update Old Passwords), you can view the passwords previously used for that login. To do this, select the item and click View Password History.

• 1Password mini (Mac only): 1Password mini gives you access to the same previous passwords for each login item as in the main 1Password app.

  To access them, display 1Password mini by clicking the 1Password icon in the menu bar or by pressing ⌘-Option-, select the login name, click the Pin to Screen button, and then click View Password History (Figure 30) to see previous passwords for that site. Click an older password (or select it with the arrow keys and press Return) to copy it.

  

Use the Trash

When you delete an item from 1Password, it goes into 1Password’s private Trash area. Just like the Trash in macOS or the Recycle Bin in Windows, this lets you retrieve items later if need be (just drag them out of the Trash). Items in the Trash behave as they do elsewhere in 1Password, except when it comes to searching. On a Mac, searches in 1Password never match items in the Trash. On a PC, you can search in the Trash only when Trash is selected in the sidebar.

If you’re sure you won’t need the items in your Trash anymore, you can delete them permanently by choosing 1Password > Empty Trash. Click Empty Trash (Mac) or Yes (Windows) to confirm.

Work with Multiple Vaults

1Password for Mac, Windows, and iOS/iPadOS includes support for multiple local vaults, plus multiple vaults within 1Password accounts. (1Password for Android supports only one local vault, but supports multiple vaults in 1Password accounts.) Although most users should find a single vault adequate for their needs, some people may want to compartmentalize their data. For example, you might want to have separate home and work vaults, or vaults that contain different sets of credentials to share with different people. Or you may want an “archive” vault to store items you no longer actively use but don’t want to lose entirely. And, users of family or team accounts automatically get both a personal vault and at least one shared vault.

Each local vault can have its own master password and can sync in its own way. One benefit of this arrangement if you don’t have a 1Password account is that you can put passwords other people need to access in a shared vault that syncs among users (for example, in Dropbox) while keeping your passwords and other data in a private vault. (I discuss sharing vaults in this way later, in Share 1Password Data. If you need greater control over sharing within a business, family, or other group, you should instead use a 1Password family or team account, which offers much more sophisticated options; see Manage a Family or Team Account.)

Use Multiple Vaults on a Mac

To create a new vault in a 1Password account on a Mac, choose File > New Vault > Account Name. Enter a title and an optional description, and click Create Vault. That’s it—no further effort is required.

To create a new local, standalone vault on a Mac, choose File > New Vault > New Standalone Vault (Figure 31). (If that option is missing, choose 1Password 7 > Preferences > Advanced and select “Allow creation of vaults outside of 1Password accounts.”) Give the vault a name, type and repeat a master password for it, and enter a hint. (The hint isn’t optional, but in the interest of security, you can enter something that would be unhelpful to an attacker, such as “none.”)

Before you continue, you may want to customize the standalone vault’s icon. To do so, click the arrow icon. Then click a new stock icon, or, to use a custom graphic, click the green + icon and then follow the procedure I explain in Add Custom Icons on a Mac. (You can also edit the vault icon later, if you like.)

When you’re done customizing your vault, click Create New Vault.

You can switch among vaults (local or not) when 1Password is unlocked in either of these ways:

• Click the vault icon at the top of the sidebar and click another vault (or All Vaults).

• Click the vault icon in 1Password mini and then choose a vault (or All Vaults).

If you created a local vault when you first set up 1Password, that vault is your primary vault; other vaults are secondary. Although each local vault has its own password, when you enter the master password for the primary vault, 1Password unlocks all your secondary vaults too. (The concept of primary and secondary vaults as such doesn’t apply to 1Password accounts; when you enter an account’s master password, any local vaults unlock too.) When 1Password locks (manually or automatically), all your vaults lock.

Initially, new secondary vaults you set up are stored only on your Mac. To sync them with other devices, switch to the secondary vault and follow the steps in Set Up Syncing. Note, however, that if your goal in syncing a secondary local vault is to share it with someone else, you must either share the vault using a family or team account, or use Dropbox or folder sync (both explained in Share 1Password Data).

You can copy or move items from the current vault to another vault—that’s equally true for vaults in 1Password accounts and local, standalone vaults. To do so, select one or more items, choose Item > Copy to Vault > Vault Name or Item > Move to Vault > Vault Name, as you prefer. Be aware, however, that each vault stores its own, independent copy of those items, so if you edit an item in one vault (for example, changing a password) that won’t affect the corresponding item in any of your other vaults.

To change the master password for a secondary local vault, switch to that vault, go to 1Password 7 > Preferences > Security, click Change Password for the “Vault Name” vault, fill in the new information, and click Change Password.

To delete a secondary vault, switch to that vault, choose 1Password > Delete Vault Name Vault and click Delete Vault.