Taking into consideration, that making Dashlane a standalone extension comes with many downsides, it should rather stay optional for users to choose between standalone and hybrid usage of Dashlane.
Some of these downsides would be:
- dependency to a browser every single time a user wants to access a password or secure note - any information within the vault - even if it is not related to any website / URL
- implementing support for Windows / macOS or application logins would become very hard and again along with complex dependencies to the web extension
- the competition offers the option to have Desktop apps, which would be a limitation rather than an improvement for (potential) Dashlane users
All in all the plan to make the app standalone is stripping users and even further development of flexibility and possible usage.
I am sure, there are small benefits when performing this move - but they do not seem to be anywhere near in balance with the disadvantages that come with it.
What are your thought on this topic? How are we going to mitigate these downsides and even better, calm our users down after they have grown close to the application.
I’m particularly worried about how it will support windows application logins, plus what functionality will be available if you’re not online (I travel – well, used to, before COVID – a lot).
I moved to Dashlane a couple of years ago after a decade or more with Roboform, hoping for some more speedy continuous improvements but have been utterly disappointed. I don’t really see what I’m getting for my subscription fee, short of useless (for me) features such as dark web monitoring or VPN, which I have (in multiple instances) from other sources already. And this recent move may make life easier for developers but doesn’t seem to add anything useful for users. Sigh.
I just pin app.dashlane.com to my taskbar and I barely notice a difference between doing that and having a desktop app. Also, Dashlane has built a ton of stuff right into the extension so I rarely need to even go to the desktop app or webapp anymore. Coming from a development background, the ability to release features increased 5 fold if you don’t need to integrate desktop apps and all the iterations, I’m excited to see what this will mean for Dashlane once they get over this hump of porting some functionality over.
Dashlane (and other password managers) have a hard enough time auto-filling websites all built on the same web languages. I can’t imagine there would be any return on investment on attempting to do that on desktop applications that could be coded in almost any language. That would be insanely costly for a use case that is non-existent for the average user. Dashlane is built for the web and I expect it will stay that way. I also expect other password managers to phase out their desktop apps as they come to the same realization that Dashlane has.
I am not entirely sure what this move will mean for me so hopefully someone will explain.
I use the desktop app because I run multiple browsers on my laptop - nearly always have 2 open but which 2 varies depending on latest versions and my experience. i often find that when streaming video via one of the browsers it is helpful to close down the other.
i have no interest or desire to have to keep logging into Dashline every time I open up a browser. Nor have I any interest or desire to restrict myself to just one browser - just because multiple browsers use the same Chrome engine does not mean my experience with them is identical. Some are better with streaming video than others, some are more customisable etc
I’m probably going to switch to a different product at this rate. Typing my enormous master password every time I happened to close the browser is kind of insane.
Half the time I’m not even logging into a place that needs much security. spending over a minute scrambling for my 2FA code and typing my master pass just to order a pizza is making me feel a little ridiculous for using the app.
I have been using dashlane as paid user around 2012-2013 and was heavily advocating it to my friends. One of major reason to do so was its standalone desktop application. In recent days, I was slowly started considering switching by having some troubles around those and announcement to deprecating desktop application was final trigger for me. I still have prepaid subscription roughly 3 years so it’s a bit bitter to give it up, but it’ll give sufficient buffer while I evaluate other pwd managers to make final decision what to use meanwhile.
As a sw engineer who writes cross-platform desktop application as daily work, I can technically understand & empathy those decision and reasoning even though I do not have full internal visibility around what’s going on. But also as a consumer, I felt this is very odd move while other pwd managers trying to improve / enhance its standalone application more for better integrated experience (for example, think about 1pwd’s new Linux desktop application release). Some might be satisfied enough with browser extensions with web-only-accessible app, but that’s not my use case. I’ve already tried those experience with my linux / chromeos env and never satisfied with its workflow in general.
In theory, would it not be possible to make the web-app have all the features the desktop app has and then simply display the web-app in a desktop application?
“You can still use your desktop app if you’ve already downloaded it, but we are no longer updating desktop design, features, or functionality. By focusing our efforts on one platform (web) instead of two (Mac & PC), we’re giving our team the ability to dedicate more time and creativity to making Dashlane something you’ll love even more.”
Does this mean that the desktop app is going to stay as it is or is it to be shut down eventually?
I have been a premium Dashlane user at least since 2014. While I have had hiccups and annoyances here and there I have been very satisfied with the product. I am not at all happy with the decision the company has made to move away from supporting a desktop application. I will start looking for a replacement solution.
Dashlane cache’s your encrypted data locally on the device and you login locally with your Master Password. If you have logged into Dashlane on that device before, a connection to the internet is not necessary for any of the apps.
I can definitely see that you can do the basic thing with the extension only.
For me I administer Dashlane in the company and use it separately in private. Coming from the business perspective I am afraid that the uproar could be big on removing the desktop app, especially since we moved from RoboForm aswell (which supports more login methods such as http-authentication pop ups and application logins). So it is basically the same expertise as u/mix579 has but on a company wide scale. We moved to Dashlane to be GDPR compliant and have a secure sharing opportunity. But coming at the cost of a worse user experience it wonder how long I am able to hold up the Dashlane flag in the company.
On the other hand - In private I have never even installed the app and just use the extension as you do.
Yeah I’ve been loving Dashlane for their security key and Windows hello feature with the desktop app. Now I have to constantly log into my browser with my master password and 2FA code from my phone every time I close my browser. I really don’t enjoy keeping browsers open and often close things down. Honestly infuriating when I could have the desktop app running in the background.
I expect by the time they actually prevent use of the desktop app they’ll have their user’s in a web-first experience for quite awhile, and may not even realize they no longer login to the desktop app.
Yes I know about having a dashlane extension with each browser but does that mean I need to re-sign into the extension each time I fire up one of the browsers?
For example I love Vivaldi for customisation and general browsing but streaming/Youtube can be a bit off. In my experience Edge is far better for streaming than Vivaldi (weird as they both now use the Chrome engine) but with some streaming sides, at some times, it is best for me to close down Vivaldi completely (even when idling it can use a lot of resource). So I may open and close browsers several times a day. Having to re-log in to the extension each time would be a severely retrograde step compared to just having the desktop app