I was introduced to 1Password through my work at 3Cloud. It was introduced to support the management of secrets while developing solutions for customers. We were given a free version for our personal use. I had been using LastPass, but I found 1Password easier to use. After I got ALS, I purchased a family plan to create a secure, yet shareable solution to collect and share my credentials. This article walks through the various recommendations for creating and using 1Password for daily use and shared use while living with ALS.

Contents

Understanding the necessity

The core purpose of a password keeper solution is to secure your credentials – usernames and passwords. Similar functionality is available in browsers like Edge and Chrome. All these solutions make it easy to save your credentials across computers and mobile devices. The browsers link to your Google or Microsoft credentials. Tools like 1Password and LastPass use separate logins and have apps and extensions to make them easy to use.

Browser solutions are not as secure as dedicated tools. They store copies with each browser they are used with. Credential management is neither easy or convenient in browsers in my experience. Because of how the information is stored, I found it annoying before I was disabled and even worse thereafter. Tools such as 1Password simplify the process.

So, the first and primary reason for 1Password is to securely store your credentials. Next, we will discuss how 1Password helps make daily tasks easier for those of us living with ALS.

Ease of use for people with ALS

I have found 1Password has greatly simplified my daily tasks whenever credentials are required. I log into the app on my Windows device. This makes it easy to enter credentials and fill out forms using 1Password.

1Password has apps for Android and Apple devices including phones and tablets. What’s nice is that it makes your credentials and other information available regardless of platform.

End-of-life preparation

The other area of importance is end-of-life planning. Using 1Password makes it easy to give access to your spouse, children, or someone else to passwords and other information often lost when someone dies. I share everything with my wife and one of my sons. My wife uses it on regular basis. Together, we maintain the information there.

My son has full access as well. The plan is for him to keep abreast of our financial situation and to help my wife with everything if I die. This has helped relieve some stress for us. As a bonus he has helped us with some complex issues that occurred when I went on disability.

Now that we’ve established the necessity of the tool, I want to dive into setup, storage, and sharing.

Setting up 1Password

First, I want to be clear. I am not giving step by step instructions for 1Password. Please refer to their website for instructions that match your current environment.

I am going to give you guidance based on my experience. First, I recommend you get the family license. That gives you five users. Plan ahead. We have four adult children. We gave a license to each of them while my wife and I share ours. This lets us easily share vaults (collections of items) with them. It is a relatively inexpensive annual subscription and well worth it.

I highly recommend you share your primary account information with someone you trust outside of your household. In our case, we shared it with the executor of our will and our power of attorney. This gives my wife and I security should anything happen to us.

My final bit of advice is to get the browser extension installed. Once you have it installed and configured, you should turn off the password manager in your browser. This will keep new items from being added to that password manager instead of 1Password. It will also prevent both password managers from suggesting multiple options at the same time.

I will make additional recommendations in the next two sections.

Storing your information

1Password saves a variety of information securely. The ability to use much of this information to fill out forms online is a huge time saver. This image shows the current categories of information 1Password stores.

Next, I will share the categories I use the most or find important to this conversation. These categories fall into two groups – autofill and secure storage. Autofill categories help make our computing much easier by reducing or eliminating typing requirements. Secure storage categories give us a single, secure storage area for important information like life insurance policies.

Let’s start with my favorite autofill categories.

Logins

Logins are the most common category. We store our username and password combinations for everything from email accounts to credit cards as a login. If you have been using a browser password manager, this is the same functionality.

If you’re currently using Edge, Chrome, or another browser, you should import your passwords into 1Password. This is a simple process. Here are some tips that I have learned along the way.

1. Plan ahead. Be sure to set aside enough time for the task. I did my migration using eye gaze. I needed a couple of hours to migrate and clean up my imported passwords.
2. Turn off browser password managers. Turn this feature off on all browsers you use. You don’t want to accidentally save new passwords while you’re migrating.
3. Import the passwords from all browsers you use. This will make sure you got all your passwords.
4. Clean up the import. This is the most time-consuming part, but it is worth it when you are done. The most important part of cleaning up is identifying the logins to keep. Browsers often have duplicate entries, and the web address is imported as the name. You should rename the keeper. For example, you should rename “www.boardgamearena.com” to “Board Game Arena”. This makes it easier to find in 1Password and looks better.
5. Archive don’t delete. During clean up, be sure to archive duplicated or unused logins. This will give you a place to find them if you need them.
6. Delete browser passwords. Once you have completed the migration and cleanup process, delete the browser lists.

Now, you are managing your logins in one place.

2 factor authentication

Multifactor authentication (MFA) or two factor authentication (2FA) is very frustrating for me. I have used authenticator apps many times throughout my career. However, when I started using Phone Link to use my phone, these applications were blocked for security reasons. My alternative was to use texts which requires me to type the code in. It works in most cases.

However, I needed to set up 2FA for my Amazon account. It requires a 2FA app to work. I heard 1Password could do it. With the help of Microsoft Copilot, I learned how to do it. I have step by step instructions on the ALS Toolbox page. The really awesome part is that 1Password now handles the entire process for me. 2FA is an added property in the matching login item. I plan to add this to other logins requiring 2FA.

Passkeys

One last thing about logins is that 1Password can also be used for passkeys. Passkeys are commonly used for passwordless logins. If this is an option to use, I highly recommend it. It further reduces the amount of interaction required to login. Anything that streamlines our work is valuable.

Identities

If you’re me, typing out email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses can take an annoyingly long time. Identities solve this problem. You can create an identity with this information and 1Password will fill it for you.

If you have more than one email address, you will need to create multiple identities. This is easy to do. Make a copy of your completed identity and change the email address. Give the new identity a new name to help you distinguish between them.

Credit cards

This is a very cool feature we discovered. We entered our credit cards into 1Password, so now I can buy things! You can store the CVV code as well. I no longer needed my wife to track down my wallet to buy something. A little more independence makes it easier for both of us.

There are many other autofill categories. I encourage you to explore the options available. Next, let’s look at a couple of the secure storage options that I am using.

Documents

This is primary secure storage we are using. You can upload documents and images. We have uploaded our life insurance policies, will, and health directives. By doing this, we have a backup copy available when we need it.

Secure notes

We use secure notes to enter information that is not in a document. This includes loan information and phone numbers for various contacts. Not everything stored in 1Password needs to be confidential. I recommend using 1Password as a central location for information you may need in an emergency or end of life scenario.

That brings us to the final piece of the puzzle, organizing and sharing the information.

Organizing and sharing

All information in Password is organized into vaults. Think of these vaults as containers or folders for your items. There are two key considerations when creating your vaults.

1. Keep it simple, but effective. Too many vaults can be complicated. Use clear names to keep it simple.
2. Plan for sharing. Vaults can be shared easily with family members.

Here are some of the vaults we created. Hopefully this will inspire you.

• Finances. This vault contains our credentials for bank accounts and credit cards.
• Health. Here we have credentials for MyChart and insurance companies. We also have our health directives stored here.
• Subscriptions. We share this vault with our children. This vault contains subscription services like Netflix and Disney+.
• Steve. This vault contains items used by me such as email accounts.

There are also some default vaults created with your account like Private and Shared. I try not to use these. The default location for new credentials is Private. You should check this periodically to move items to the correct vault.

Wrap up

If you made it this far, congratulations! I hope you see the value of 1Password for daily living and for end-of-life planning. I encourage you to use this tool sooner rather than later.

If you have any questions, please reach out to me with a comment on the post or using our contact form.