Better integration of other password managers aside from 1Password

[Vitalthorbi]

Hi,

 

I've been using Alfred for over a year now and have been enjoying it greatly. I do have some suggestions.

 

I would like to see better integration of other password managers, aside from 1Password. 1Password seem to get preferential treatment. Does Alfred have a partnership with them?

 

I would like to see Lastpass, Bitwarden, etc. receive better support/integration from Alfred. Lastpass is very popular. Currently there are workflows, but those are limited and dependent on the dev's continued support. It doesn't work as quick/smoothly and requires external dependencies.

 

Are there any plans to implement this?

 

Thank you!

[deanishe]

Hi @Vitalthorbi, welcome to the forum.

 

16 hours ago, Vitalthorbi said:

1Password seem to get preferential treatment.

 

That's because 1Password provides a simple, official way for other applications to read the names of its items and ask 1Password to open them:

 

 

LastPass, Bitwarden and pals do not provide such an API, and the chances of integration with Alfred are about 0% until they get one.

 

16 hours ago, Vitalthorbi said:

It doesn't work as quick/smoothly and requires external dependencies.

 

That's because of the lack of appropriate APIs in LastPass and Bitwarden, not because it's only a workflow. The experience would be little different if it were a built-in Alfred feature because it would have to work the same, clunky way.

 

The workflows also require you to unlock your password vault (again, due to the way the password managers work, not because they're workflows). This has very important security implications, which is another reason why official integration is unlikely.

 

16 hours ago, Vitalthorbi said:

Are there any plans to implement this?

 

Have you raised this with the LastPass/Bitwarden developers? They need to take the first step by providing the necessary API.

[Vitalthorbi]

Thanks for bringing that up. I haven’t considered 1P’s APIs. 

 

Even without the APIs, the LastPass workflow that I was referring to already does almost everything Alfred is able to do with 1Password. It’s just a lot slower to populate search results, which you said was due to the lack of APIs, and it doesn’t open the websites when you press “Enter”, which doesn’t seem to be due to an API issue. Opening the website on Enter keypress just doesn’t work because the dev didn’t add that in the workflow. There’s an enhancement request for that on their repo (https://github.com/stuartcryan/lastpass-alfred-workflow) 

 

There’s also signs that it hasn’t been maintained very well since it hasn’t even been updated for Alfred 4 yet (I had to modify some of the code for Alfred 4). The dev are too busy to keep it polished and maintained, which I actually think is the primary reason why it’s not as polished as it could be. He actually made a post about needing someone to take over.

 

I’ll be contacting LastPass/Bitwarden too, but any possibility that Alfred can take over maintenance of that repo, at least polish it up a bit and update it to work with Alfred 4? 

[Vitalthorbi]

Confirmed, opening the URL and auto-login doesn’t depend on APIs. 

 

Possible to launch the url to a website and have it auto-login? #9

https://github.com/stuartcryan/lastpass-alfred-workflow/issues/9

[deanishe]

6 hours ago, Vitalthorbi said:

It’s just a lot slower to populate search results, which you said was due to the lack of APIs,

 

I couldn't say exactly why that workflow is slow (I don't use it or LastPass), but you're not going to get the same speed and convenience as with 1Password because LastPass/Bitwarden provide no way for you to achieve that in a safe way.

 

6 hours ago, Vitalthorbi said:

it doesn’t open the websites when you press “Enter”

 

That does seem like a pretty big oversight on the developer's part…

 

6 hours ago, Vitalthorbi said:

but any possibility that Alfred can take over maintenance of that repo

 

That would be unprecedented, and I'd say the chances are basically zero. (I'd say the likelihood of anyone stepping up to maintain the LastPass workflow is pretty low because it's written in Perl, which is not at all popular in the Alfred community.)

 

It seems you mostly want support for LastPass/Bitwarden added to Alfred for the guaranteed reliability. But the difficulty of guaranteeing that is precisely why I think it's very unlikely to happen.

 

Adding an official feature is basically committing to maintaining it indefinitely, and that's not something the Alfred team does at all lightly. If the application or service doesn't have an official API with the general guarantees of stability that implies, it's 99% certain it's not going in Alfred.

 

With password managers, you also have to consider the sensitivity of the data. You can't access any LastPass/Bitwarden data through the clients without the vault being unlocked, so to get a smooth experience, you'd have to leave your vault unlocked all the time. That's not a good idea, and Alfred generally tries hard not to allow or encourage you to make poor choices.

 

6 hours ago, Vitalthorbi said:

Possible to launch the url to a website and have it auto-login? #9

https://github.com/stuartcryan/lastpass-alfred-workflow/issues/9

 

It's possible to launch the URL, but I'm pretty sure auto-login is a no-go because I believe there's no way to tell LastPass/Bitwarden to do that.

 

1Password works so well because you can do exactly that.