> It would be really nice if adding a masked email automatically created a "sending identity."
It does.
Just click "... Show all" when choosing a sender, and that will expand the list/search to include masked emails. It should also show you the domain/service it was set up for. And as you noted, the masked email will automatically be used as the sender when replying to an email that was sent to it as well.
Using 1Password makes it super easy to see which masked email was used for each service, so I can't really relate to your frustrations there either.
I think it's a pretty polished experience, and definitely beats everything else I've used in the past.
Only sort of. First, this is a new feature, there used to be a whole section on adding "sending identities" and describing how to do it in order to send from a masked email address. I have support emails from 1Password pointing me to those docs as well. That whole section has been removed and now there's a note in the docs saying why (no date, though, so I don't know how recent).
Second, your description glosses over the fact that if I click the "from" address dropdown, and then in the filter/search field, type the domain associated with the masked email address, nothing shows up except "Show All." Why wouldn't a filter/search find the address? I have to click "Show All" and then repeat the search.
However, if I search/filter for any of the dozens of "sending identities" I created previously, the search/filter works correctly. So the UI is completely broken. When I search/filter something, and nothing shows up except a "Show All" button, that's the UI telling me that there were no matches. Oh, but now I learn that there are matches, they're just hidden under "Show All" (which should be renamed to "show matching masked email addresses" or something!?).
What's missing? The old experience definitely sounds pretty frustrating.
Personally, I really like that masked emails are hidden by default. I've got 20 "real" sending identities, so when I'm searching I want a quick selection that doesn't include dozens of masked results. The amount of times I start a new email thread with a masked email would probably be a small handful of times per year.
Edit:
> I have to click "Show All" and then repeat the search.
Maybe that's a bug you can report for your browser? I don't need to retype anything and just hit enter when I get no results, then it expands the results to include masked items.
This has been one of my biggest peeves about the WWW since 1993. Please include publication and/or change dates and/or include a changelog on your pages. Do not force your users to resort to reading metadata, the URL path, the Wayback Machine, or dark magic to figure out when and what changed. Diff is a solved problem; why can't I diff a generic web page?
> there used to be a whole section on adding "sending identities"
This still exists, by the way. They moved it to Settings => Migration => Import => Add alumni email forwarding address or non-SMTP sending identity, which makes absolutely no sense to me.
It does.
Just click "... Show all" when choosing a sender, and that will expand the list/search to include masked emails. It should also show you the domain/service it was set up for. And as you noted, the masked email will automatically be used as the sender when replying to an email that was sent to it as well.
Using 1Password makes it super easy to see which masked email was used for each service, so I can't really relate to your frustrations there either.
I think it's a pretty polished experience, and definitely beats everything else I've used in the past.