You can now try 1Password’s customizable redesign on your iPhone and iPad

Image: 1Password

1Password released an early access version of 1Password 8 for the iPad and iPhone on Wednesday, with a new interface and new back-end. The new version of the app, which 1Password says will eventually make its way to all its supported platforms, has been available in early access mode for Mac since August and was released for Windows in November.

The redesign of 1Password 7 was obvious to me when I opened the new version of the app. Almost every icon has been changed to be a little more fun and colorful, and the interface feels more modern now.

A few recently used passwords were displayed on the favorites screen of 1Password 7. There wasn't much you could do to personalize the screen other than marking logins as favorites. I was always frustrated by this because I never used the screen and would bounce to look for something.

1Password 8 has a home screen where you can access things like your vaults, categories, and lists of recently created or modified passwords. If you are a big user of categories, favorites, and tags, you can move those options to the top. You can hide everything if you dump everything into a single folder.

Image: 1Password

The old version of the app would let you know if one of your passwords had been compromised, and alert you if the login you were viewing had a reused password, but there wasn't a single screen that let you manage your overall security. The mobile version of the desktop version of the app gives you an overall security score.

Image: 1Password

There’s been some controversy around 1Password 8, after the company announced that its Mac app’s user interface would be powered by Electron (the web browser tech behind apps like Slack, Evernote, and Discord) instead of native code like SwiftUI or AppKit. Some user s worried that the change would make the password manager more resource-intensive to run, or that it would feel less like a real Mac app. However you feel about that change, it’s not really a factor with this iOS app, which 1Password has said uses SwiftUI for the interface, and Rust for the core.

There are other reasons you may not want to use an early access version of a password manager. It has been okay for me so far, but there will probably be a few bugs to catch. Since this update is a major change from the previous version, it's probably best to wait until an official release. If you want to try the redesign for yourself as soon as possible, you can join the TestFlight using the link in 1Password.