cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20572072

Android has had an autofill feature for password managers for years now, but it’s broken and needs to be fixed.

  • d0ntpan1c
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    2 months ago

    FWIW some of the problems are on website/app developers. Not sure on specifics on the app side, but with websites if the dev doesn’t use semantic html input elements with the correct type attribute to denote the password form, autofill won’t work (since neither android or the password manager know its time to do stuff)

    Nothing wrong with username/password on different screens (one at a time is good for several accessibility-minded reasons) but again, there are some best practices to follow which allow screen readers and password managers to still act as you would expect.

    I’d assume android app dev is similar.

    That said… I do think it’s gotten a bit clunkier at times in ways I dont recall being problematic in the past. I use 1password and heliboard or floris board and while those keyboards seem to bug out a bit, sometimes the bigger problem seems to be that android isn’t always telling 1password enough info to find the right account. Idk how apps “inform” the password manager (maybe via url’s in a metadata file or maybe passwors managers have ro keep theor own internal db?), but apps that use web wrappers (specifically the old and/or shitty ones) report their url as http://localhost since the wrapper just renders a local page in a web view. that’ll wreck a password managers day real quick.

    Idk if Android is worse than iOS here, not that it is a reason for google to punt on improving it. iOS has its own autofill quirks thay can be just as annoying. Esp constantly asking if you want to use your app or apple keychain without a way to just pick a default…

    • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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      2 months ago

      Idk how apps “inform” the password manager (maybe via url’s in a metadata file or maybe passwors managers have ro keep theor own internal db?),

      no idea about 1password, but bitwarden uses the package name (unique to each app), prepended with a special url scheme