There are a number of great password managers out there, but 1Password is attempting to make itself stand out from the crowd this week with the introduction of official support for Linux. And for now, it’s a more feature-rich experience than Windows and macOS users enjoy.
As well as offering a browser-based experience, 1Password developed a desktop app for Linux because, “nothing beats a full-featured desktop app that takes advantage of everything the operating system has to offer, especially if it can make the browser experience itself better.” It doesn’t matter which Linux distribution you run, 1Password ensured there’s full distro and app support for Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Snap store, and Ubuntu. If you run another distro, the app still works you just need to install it manually.
In terms of features, it matches what’s available on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, but also introduces a new look and adds several features those other platforms haven’t got yet. They include:
- Secure file attachments
- Item archiving and deletion features for better document organization
- Watchtower Dashboard to monitor and evaluate your password security health
- New sharing details to see who has access to what
- Quick Find and intelligent search suggestions
For Linux specifically, there’s an automatic dark mode selection based on your GTK theme, integrations with numerous window managers including GNOME and KDE, and system tray icon support to name but a few of the standard features. In terms of security, 1Password developed the desktop app using the Rust programming language and takes advantage of the ring API for encryption. Even the link between the desktop app and the browser version of 1Password is fully-encrypted.
1Password costs $2.99 per month for an individual or $4.99 per month for a family account (up to six people) if you pay annually. However, teams working on open source software can claim a free account by opening a pull request against the 1Password Open Source Projects repo. There’s also the option to try it out for free for 14 days.
