Disabling Safari autofill on usernames and passwords

Question

You might already know, that Safari has a nasty autofill bug where it fills email, username and password fields no matter if you set autocomplete="off" or not.

Here's a basic form:

<form action="/" method="post">     <p>         <label>E-mail</label>         <input type="text" name="email" value="" />     </p>     <p>         <label>Password</label>         <input type="password" name="password" value="" />     </p> </form> 

...Safari autofills those fields on page load like it should, job well done!

If you put autocomplete="off" to the fields and/or the form element, Safari still autofills those fields:

<form action="/" method="post" autocomplete="off">     <p>         <label>E-mail</label>         <input type="text" name="email" value="" autocomplete="off" />     </p>     <p>         <label>Password</label>         <input type="password" name="password" value="" autocomplete="off" />     </p> </form> 

Even this doesn't work:

<form action="/" method="post" autocomplete="off">     <p>         <label>E-mail</label>         <input type="text" name="secretfield1" value="" autocomplete="off"/>     </p>     <p>         <label>Password</label>         <input type="password" name="secretfield2" value="" autocomplete="off" />     </p> </form> 

...since Safari looks up those <label> elements if they contain words "E-mail", "Password" etc. and goes ahead with the autofill.

Aaaahhhhha!, I thought, and tried this:

<form action="/" method="post" autocomplete="off">     <p>         <label>%REPLACE_EMAIL_TITLE%</label>         <input type="text" name="%REPLACE_EMAIL_NAME%" value="" autocomplete="off"/>     </p>     <p>         <label>%REPLACE_PASSWORD_TITLE%</label>         <input type="password" name="%REPLACE_PASSWORD_NAME%" value="" autocomplete="off" />     </p> </form> 

...and replace %TAGS% with the real names using JavaScript. Safari autofill kicks in. No matter if you set a 10 second timeout on the replacement.

So, is this really the only option?

<form action="/" method="post" autocomplete="off">     <p>         <label>That electronic postal address we all use, but can't write the title here because Safari fills this with YOUR information if you have autofill turned on</label>         <input type="text" name="someelectronicpostaladdress" value="" autocomplete="off"/>     </p>     <p>         <label>A set of characters, letters, numbers and special characters that is so secret that only you or the user you are changing it for knows, but can't write the title here because Safari sucks</label>         <input type="password" name="setofseeecretcharacters" value="" autocomplete="off" />     </p> </form> 

I hope not?

UPDATE: @skithund pointed out in Twitter, that Safari is getting a 4.0.3 update, which mentions "Login AutoFill". Does anyone know if that update is going to fix this?

Answer 1

The reason browsers are ignoring autocomplete=off is because there have been some web-sites that tried to disable auto-completing of passwords.

That is wrong.

And in July 2014 Firefox was the last major browser to finally implement the change to ignore any web-site that tries to turn off autocompleting of passwords.

• June 2009: IEInternals blog where they discuss keeping the user in control (archive)
• February 2014: Chrome's announcement when they began ignoring autocomplete=off (archive)
• January 2014: Bugzilla Bug 956906 - ignore autocomplete="off" when offering to save passwords via the password manager (archive)
• Reddit discussion (archive)

One of the top user-complaints about our HTML Forms AutoComplete feature is “It doesn’t work– I don’t see any of my previously entered text.” When debugging such cases, we usually find that the site has explicitly disabled the feature using the provided attribute, but of course, users have no idea that the site has done so and simply assume that IE is buggy. In my experience, when features are hidden or replaced, users will usually blame the browser, not the website.

Any attempt by any web-site to circumvent the browser's preference is wrong, that is why browsers ignore it. There is no reason known why a web-site should try to disable saving of passwords.

• Chrome ignores it
• Safari ignores it
• IE ignores it
• Firefox ignores it

At this point, web developers typically protest “But I wouldn’t do this everywhere– only in a few little bits where it makes sense!” Even if that’s true, unfortunately, this is yet another case where there’s really no way for the browser to tell the difference. Remember, popup windows were once a happy, useful part of the web browsing experience, until their abuse by advertisers made them the bane of users everywhere. Inevitably, all browsers began blocking popups, breaking even the “good” sites that used popups with good taste and discretion.

What if I'm a special snowflake?

There are people who bring up a good use-case:

I have a shared, public area, kiosk style computer. We don't want someone to (accidentally or intentionally) save their password so the next user could use it.

That does not violate the statement:

Any attempt by any web-site to circumvent the browser's preference is wrong

That is because in the case of a shared kiosk:

• it is not the web-server that has the oddball policy
• it is the client user-agent that has the oddball policy

The browser (the shared computer) is the one that has the requirement that it not try to save passwords.

The correct way to prevent the browser from saving passwords
is to configure the browser to not save passwords.

Since you have locked down and control this kiosk computer: you control the settings. That includes the option of saving passwords.

In Chrome and Internet Explorer, you configure those options using Group Policies (e.g. registry keys).

From the Chrome Policy List:

AutoFillEnabled

Enable AutoFill

Data type: Boolean (REG_DWORD)

Windows registry location: Software\Policies\Chromium\AutoFillEnabled

Description: Enables Chromium's AutoFill feature and allows users to auto complete web forms using previously stored information such as address or credit card information. If you disable this setting, AutoFill will be inaccessible to users. If you enable this setting or do not set a value, AutoFill will remain under the control of the user. This will allow them to configure AutoFill profiles and to switch AutoFill on or off at their own discretion.

Please pass the word up to corporate managers that trying to disable autocompleting of password is wrong. It is so wrong that browsers are intentionally ignoring anyone who tries to do it. Those people should stop doing the wrong thing.™

Put it another way

In other words:

• if the users browser
• mistakes "Please enter the name of your favorite maiden name's first color." for a new password
• and the user
• doesn't want their browser
• to update their password,
• then they
• will click Nope

• if i want to save my HIPPA password: that's my right
• if i want to save my PCI password: that's my right
• if i want to save the "new password for the user": that's my right
• if i want to save the one-time-password: that's my right
• if i want to save my "first color's favorite maiden" answer: that's my right.

It's not your job to over-rule the user's wishes. It's their browser; not yours.