
Valid use cases for autocomplete=off - andrewstuart
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=587466
======
andrewstuart
It seems Google Chrome team has decided that autocomplete=off is bad for
usability and now ignores it despite such a change breaking autocomplete
fields all over the web. There's no sign they are going to change it so that
autocomplete=off works again.

It's no longer up to you as a developer whether or not you think a field
should autocomplete - Google has decided that for you.

Have a look at the address field on this image - you can see that autofill
completely obscures Googles own autocomplete (which is a paid service)
[https://00e9e64bacbf59c74081b665c25aa171225f21f85c7201a66c-a...](https://00e9e64bacbf59c74081b665c25aa171225f21f85c7201a66c-apidata.googleusercontent.com/download/storage/v1/b/monorail-
prod.appspot.com/o/16%2Fattachments%2F66508f4b-cf1f-48d3-9cbc-9c29f1d1591e?qk=AD5uMEtpYa1hCZdHrQNk9jq-
_atsnpC3hJScKisJASV8jP5eV0_JxB1oGKgtcRn7U_Y6h7Mn0t-ux-s923exJE0JQGHTHFTo6LGcL2s8l2jPJG1z9awGrr7VGFv5-27QFOgXWw-
YySdzp0F8tCZNw4RpsUZE49Wq9Yf9mCW7s4tqnRJ9TGjN13FAGdQ8KOZpNrAIUDQzyEjBxY3oduQmROyXvJiDBMZxZo1E9V-NBZmk_Eb6ArJo9g_GdQDb8DjGIGEnaOuAxMI4M7-x8bSEnz76LCbrF1Ct92akt95-xU92FzbKnsluWEviChfsJMZqeyDsgVe-
rxBQJMO39EN_PiHWEjhuP2lBzJajwOVJLG7vA1R7vYPImyn2DQb5pdhBsZxZRXBQvWzHZ3ImI487N8GtqgRec7MlmSrjc0QX5c4sLLHc4KyjtBalUGes30cTaArHdK11BBWPVsPdvo_IClKL2sOd2-JCN1qTZ_F7vI52E6uqLNAtdUdofNwMXvrHkF8xsyrIO5ucvqLTrbNhNp9egkmkHG6Z-gMkXRAfQ9Ajo-
IpGCrYC8g8-5tTtXivhCAb8XFQgIehtAKi4FvwFyDLnrHwUdbR-
ftTODa02KdhjQB2vjv39qb95J7f_4-51rmk-
NpJCoUjUq9O3SCWenZHc8caXqgD6l38O0IWsLdNEYWxsIe9UceQraaK3JoD2Lk2oA_RdnMtLMFK2t8-Mf4xCzclg_OQ1Osp_8jzvMPpqBfS_U_FPhsOvW-
Nan45qy6o3G9seEDhLSuWgL-
Hpy-5UGgGUbSEBv6tsNAMASr0w5WzB8DWyLvaGsW9KLqXxDSvCKy2yATBF184qS5h7gnvJJh1E2todA)
That's not good for users.

You simply cannot turn off either autofill or autocomplete.

Further info: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29931712/chrome-
autofill...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29931712/chrome-autofill-
covers-autocomplete-for-google-maps-api-v3)

Please, if you care about autocomplete=off then register a comment on the
Chrome bug
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=587466](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=587466)

The strange thing is that this even breaks Google's own paid Google Maps
autocomplete service - search the text in the linked Chrome bug page for
"maps" to see what people have to say about that.

~~~
Sohcahtoa82
> Have a look at the address field on this image - you can see that autofill
> completely obscures Googles own autocomplete (which is a paid service)
> [https://00e9e64bacbf59c74081b665c25aa171225f21f85c7201a66c-a...](https://00e9e64bacbf59c74081b665c25aa171225f21f85c7201a66c-a..).
> That's not good for users.

You may want to reupload that image to an image hosting service. When I click
that link, I get a page that says:

{"error":{"errors":[{"domain":"global","reason":"lockedDomainExpired","message":"Locked
Domain Expired"}],"code":401,"message":"Locked Domain Expired"}}

------
matthewmacleod
I get why this is a thing - there are so many shitty UI-breaking abuses of
this. But it’s terribly annoying when you do have a good use-case. Like so
many features, I guess.

What’s the right solution to this problem?

~~~
bhauer
Seems a better solution would be to give the user a say. If autocomplete is
off, and the user wants to autocomplete the form, the user should be able to
right-click in the form and select "Autocomplete this form," ideally as a one-
time operation or for this form from now on.

------
andrewstuart
I have done some digging since posting this.

Chromium appears to execute some logic to decide if it should show autofill
for a given field. This logic appears to be analyzing text before the element
that autofill is displayed on. I thought "if I know what that logic is then I
can trick it into not displaying." I spent some time looking through the
Chromium source code to find that logic and understand it, but I could not
find it and don't have time to research it further. This seems the key though
to managing this problem.

Other ways of addressing this might include using a different sort of HTML
element instead of input. For example textarea or editable div.

More possible pointers to solutions are here:
[https://stackoverflow.com/a/49161445/627492](https://stackoverflow.com/a/49161445/627492)

~~~
Brian_K_White
Those are ways to work around a problem that was unneccesarily and
artificially injected. Why tolerate that and work-around it on your dime? Why
not instead tell the person creating the problem "hey, don't create this
problem you jerk!"

------
Scryptonite
Previous discussion about this in 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11911116)

Last I checked you can always give Chrome a stronger hint not to autocomplete
using something like this:

    
    
        document.querySelectorAll("input[autocomplete=off]")
            .forEach(element =>
                element.autocomplete = window && window.chrome ? "hell-no-chrome" : "off"
            );
    

I think it's a shame that they didn't design UI or something to coordinate
with the user to override it in less well-behaved web apps. Instead, they just
decided to ignore it completely.

------
aequitas
As a user I'm more often annoyed by autocompletion not working when it should.
Either disabled by the developer or just defunct.

However they might want to step up their game on not trying to fill every
user/password field they find. For example, Gitlab repository mirror settings
will be autofilled with your login credentials and they will be saved if you
don't pay attention to yellow boxes.

~~~
Brian_K_White
As a user I'm more often annoyed by autocompletion than the lack of it. I turn
it off everywhere I can, including things like the keyboard on my phone. So
that's a no-op, two microscopic anecdotal data points that exactly cancel each
other out. Being a user or speaking from the perspective of a user didn't make
any special difference.

I do like one form of auto-complete, which is the tab-complete in the bash
shell. You are not autofilled or autocompleted or auto re-written or auto "you
typed foo but we're showing you results for 'food' instead" 99% of the time.
But once in a blue moon when you actually want something to be autocompleted,
you can get suggestions for that one thing on the spot with an extra keypress.
But you have to ask for it. It never messes with you all by itself.

------
kgwxd
I've made data entry software for the past 20 years. I've had plenty of tasks
where users just wanted autocomplete off, many of them for privacy and
security concerns. From a UX perspective, it's usually distracting and not
useful on large forms, especially on fields that have small comments that tend
to vary only slightly but at a part in the value that's cut off by the stupid
drop down that doesn't expand beyond the width of the field for some reason.
You get a huge list of things that all look the same. And sometimes that
stupid long list is blocking a part of the form that has data you need to see
to know what you need to enter into the field you're on.

There's a 100 other great reasons on there already. I really hope they don't
do this. Most of my user base uses Chrome and I will start getting old tickets
re-opened that I won't be able to fix without horrible hacks.

------
tango24
This received 23 points in 30 minutes, and yet it is no longer on the front-
page? Compare that to this [1], which has received 23 points in 4 hours, and
is still on the front page. Are some folks flagging this into oblivion?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18095356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18095356)

~~~
zbowling
too much velocity. probably artificial upvotes. also trying to make HN into a
personal army to do achieve a goal doesn't sit well with mods. just report on
news.

~~~
sctb
Yes, most of the upvotes were dropped by the software for being inorganic, but
it was user flags that did it in (moderators didn't see it until now).

Edit: we've updated the title and turned off some of the flags.

~~~
andrewstuart
What does inorganic upvotes mean?

I'm the original poster but I sure as heck didn't do anything to artificially
upvote it. I didn't upvote it at all.

~~~
dang
It's the software that tries to catch promotional votes a.k.a. voting rings.
It does sometimes get things wrong, which is probably what happened here.

As sctb said, though, it's user flags that affected the post's rank the most.
Perhaps the editorialized title had something to do with that
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097611)),
and/or perhaps there is just fatigue with this class of submissions. People
come to HN for unpredictable things, so whenever something starts to get
predictable, they get ornery.

------
bumfodder
my workaround for things like this is to do everything myself. Use a canvas,
listen to keyboard and mouse events, then you have a input of your own.

maybe one day, under the governing of Chrome team, the only thing left in web
is canvas. Then just thank Chrome for pushing the single-page application
concept one step further.

------
sebazzz
If you are going to force auto complete on, fine. But at least make sure those
ugly yellow field backgrounds that appear on autofill can be styled... This
isn't possible in chrome and in our Web application it looked really ugly.

------
zbowling
no protest. This is good for usability. I hate sites that disable
autocomplete.

------
nix0n
As a user, this sounds great.

Is there a Firefox extension to ignore autocomplete=off?

------
sctb
We've updated the title from “Google Chrome team has decided to ignore
autocomplete=off”.

