Autofill isn't working on mobile (generally or for a specific site or app)

[eliykat]

Describe the Bug

We are aware of some situations where the Bitwarden mobile app will not autofill information correctly. This may be due to:

• the particular website or app you're trying to autofill
• the particular browser being used (including first and third party browsers)
• the mobile operating system and/or its version (Android vs. iOS)
• the mobile device (hardware)
• some other combination of factors

This includes situations where:

• autofill does not work at all
• autofill does not work consistently
• autofill otherwise does not work as expected

This is something the Bitwarden team is actively working on but need your help as a community and active Bitwarden users!

Note: this issue is for the Bitwarden mobile app only. If you're having issues with the browser extension on a computer, please go to this issue instead.

Expected Result

If you have autofill enabled (following the instructions for Android or iOS, and you click a field in a login form in your mobile browser or an app, you should have the option to autofill the credentials from your Bitwarden vault.

Actual Result

This works most of the time, but not always and it can depend on many, many factors. Some sites, apps or devices simply don't work, some don't work consistently and others who knows. This is what we're aiming to fix!

Call to Action

Below is a link to a Google Form that we have created for capturing information that will help us track down all of these pages, apps, devices and/or OS versions where Bitwarden has failed to autofill your information. You may submit as many as you like, just please help us help you and the community by providing meaningful information and only those sites/pages where it legitimately doesn't work.

Report autofill failure - mobile

If you've been sent to this issue because another issue you had open was closed as a duplicate, thank you for taking the time to submit the issue to us, however we truly need to track this under a single item in aggregate fashion so we can manage it holistically and ensure we're taking broad measures that will improve this behavior with the maximum benefit to all. Please consider using the linked form above to submit the prior sites you had reported in the issue closed.

[larena1]

@eliykat is there any news maybe? It's soon 3 months that "the Bitwarden team is actively working on" fixing the longstanding autofill issues, part of which been reported years ago but never cared about, and the commit history unfortunately does not indicate any progress so far.

[douglasparker]

I counted 62 referenced issues.

When my issue was closed this issue didn't even accurately reflect the problem that was described in the original issue.

I will admit, autofill has gotten better but I can't help but feel annoyed that so many people put in effort to help diagnose the problems with autofill only to be swept under the rug.

Edit: Why even bother going from a public issue tracker to a Google Form?

[tgreer-bw]

Hi @douglasparker and @larena1 - thanks for your feedback here. I can confirm that this is an active research endeavor - no code commits yet, as we need to use a scalable and sustainable mechanism for this. We actually have brought additional roles into the engineering realm to assist with many of the autofill/autosave items.

@douglasparker we use the google sheet as a faster way to compare URLs, etc. than within comments on issues.

[puppykickr]

As the Auto-Fill 'feature' has never, ever worked at all for me on any of my devices, I just don't use it. Sure, at first it was very frustrating for me- but once I came to the conclusion that it does not work, will not ever work, and therefore is not really a feature at all- I was relieved of this irritation.

In fact, this is not a Bitwarden problem. Auto-Fill never worked right for me even before Bitwarden was on any of my devices.

I just use the quick setting tile, and save the info I need to the clipboard (keyboard, not system) and type the other info.

Yes, it is a hassle. But much less so than trying to get Auto-Fill to work.

[heiserhorn]

Is there any time frame to improve the Auto-Fill behavior following the inputs provided in the google doc file?

[geoffsterr]

have you considered the possibility of an unknown malware capturing the password to certain apps? It kinda seems like the login details are getting captured in transit from vault to the certain app. I've run lots of scans with many products but well no can detect Pegasus yet only look for traces. I have reason to believe my device has been targeted by someone. I've submitted the Google Form just now with the details

[douglasparker]

I have reason to believe my device has been targeted by someone.

If your device was compromised, all of your accounts would be compromised and you'd be well aware of that by now.

Bitwarden can't protect you from a device that is compromised.

[geoffsterr]

hi well it's not quite as simple as that, and I don't recall asking anything about needing protection, I was simply giving the background and a possible area to look at as a cause I thought was pretty simple to make out without your massive assumptions

[douglasparker]

hi well it's not quite as simple as that, and I don't recall asking anything about needing protection, I was simply giving the background and a possible area to look at as a cause

It's most definitely not malware that is causing the autofill issues.

I thought was pretty simple to make out without your massive assumptions

Yeah, okay bud. 👍

[larena1]

@eliykat @Greenderella

Another month now and still no traces of any progress to be seen. Would you mind sharing the status with us? Autofill is not an overly complicated feature IMHO. In case of native Android autofill it's just parsing the view structure and feeding the right data back to the system.

For the most part it's working as it is but it'll always fill the password into the username field on sites where there's only a username field like Amazon eBay PayPal Microsoft etc and that there's no fallback in match detection to detect hostname when only the hostname is provided like through native Android autofill APIs but the entry has match detection set to starts with.

[yurividal]

On Samsung browser, if you close Samsung browser (recents, swipe up) and relaunch it, bitwarden works and you get the inline autofill. It works for a while, and then after some minutes it stops again. So, it's definitely some sort of timer or timeout that is going on, that somehow kills the autofill service for the browser.

[cstrouse]

Autofill is working on Android 10 devices and I've only been running into it not filling forms sporadically since upgrading my M1 Macbook Air to build 21A5304g of the Monterrey beta and my phone to build 19A5325f of the iOS 15 beta. The failures are occuring with the browser extensions for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox on macOS and iOS. When I describe the issue as sporadic I mean that it stops working for every site for a period of time (sometimes hours but this most recent autofill failure has been going on for nearly a week now). I'm applying the 15 beta 7 update to iOS this morning and hoping that whatever they changed is resolved as they work on the new browser extension support for mobile Safari, etc. Will advise.

UPDATE: Updating to 15 beta (19A5337a) seems to have resolved the autofill problem.

[THEOCKID]

@eliykat @Greenderella

Another month now and still no traces of any progress to be seen. Would you mind sharing the status with us? Autofill is not an overly complicated feature IMHO. In case of native Android autofill it's just parsing the view structure and feeding the right data back to the system.

For the most part it's working as it is but it'll always fill the password into the username field on sites where there's only a username field like Amazon eBay PayPal Microsoft etc and that there's no fallback in match detection to detect hostname when only the hostname is provided like through native Android autofill APIs but the entry has match detection set to starts with.

I would say that Autofill is a wildly complicated feature, depending on 10's of items all working at the same time to have a successfull 'fill.

Truth be told, I've used bitwarden for years and have loved it. Recently, I've tried "straying" to other PW managers (e.g. 1password, Keeper). They have more pleasing interfaces, and I just wanted to see what was out there. Well, I can tell you I'm back to Bitwarden, and I'll probably "stray" in 3-5 years again to test the waters.

Bitwarden, ,while not perfect, is in my opinion the top in terms of functionality. With autofill, yes, it doesnt always pop up perfectly, and/or doesn't make the right pick from my vault, BUT I always have the access to BW via the QuickTiles, and can quickly get the Username/Password/TOTP that I need, and those things can't be said for Keeper or 1PW etc. Those other apps: if they don't get a perfect match with your vault records, pow, you get nothing. NOTHING. BW has multiple redundancies / paths at hand.

With BW, I know that I have multiple routes to get my info that i need. It either (a) works and pops up the autofill button and (a1) gives me the correct info or (a2) I can pick from the list of comparable logins or (1c) I can choose to search my entire vault and copy and paste manually OR (b) doesn't pop up and I can (b1) go to the QuickTiles and pick either (b2) Auto-fill or (b3) My Vault and get my info that way (I don't find the Auto-fill quicktile to work that frequently, but I still try it).

I want to thank @kspearrin and @tgreer-bw et al for their continued improvements with the app, and I've learned to be patient with the process. Oh, and btw, nice new avatar @kspearrin (although you did look like quite the jet pilot in your prior one)

[AnthillSudoku]

Hi, please do not take this as impoliteness to your team.

KepassDX password manager has no issue with autofill in my Android 10 except that it does not copy OTP. Since it is opensource, do you believe is worth a look how they are doing it?

Thanks

[yurividal]

I have recently updated my Samsung Galaxy s21 to android 12 Beta (OneUI 4) and i can confirm that inline autofill has started to work as intended! Seems to work every time, using Samsung browser or chrome. No more timeouts (as of yet. It's been 3 days)

[yurividal]

I have recently updated my Samsung Galaxy s21 to android 12 Beta (OneUI 4) and i can confirm that inline autofill has started to work as intended! Seems to work every time, using Samsung browser or chrome. No more timeouts (as of yet. It's been 3 days)

Unfortunately, after a couple of days the same behavior is back. Autofill works for a while and then it stops. The only way to get it back is to kill the browser app and reopen it, Then it works again for a while. This is SO ANNOYING!!!

[larena1]

More than half a year now and nothing but empty words so far. I was kind of expecting this having seen how issues were being dealt with (or not dealt with at all) in recent years but had a little hope nonetheless.

[douglasparker]

Yeah, I was hoping to see some improvements in this area.

Can anyone on the Bitwarden team provide an update?

[yurividal]

More than half a year now and nothing but empty words so far. I was kind of expecting this having seen how issues were being dealt with (or not dealt with at all) in recent years but had a little hope nonetheless.

This seems to be a very complex bug, that involves not only the password manager but also the browsers and maybe even the keyboards. But, I agree... it is frustrating indeed to have such an issue on a crucial part of the app, and still persist after more than 1 year...

[larena1]

More than half a year now and nothing but empty words so far. I was kind of expecting this having seen how issues were being dealt with (or not dealt with at all) in recent years but had a little hope nonetheless.

This seems to be a very complex bug, that involves not only the password manager but also the browsers and maybe even the keyboards. But, I agree... it is frustrating indeed to have such an issue on a crucial part of the app, and still persist after more than 1 year...

It is not that complex at all. It's just that apparently nobody is working on it and that the last official reply was soon 4 months ago.

[THEOCKID]

So I got a new Pixel 6 Pro, and had issues, but I've figured out how to get it to work and it hasn't failed me in >2 days (and I use BW a TON!):

Go into BW on your phone

Go to Auto-fill Services, and turn off everything: 1st Use Inline Autofill, then Auto-fill Service. Then Use Draw-Over, then Use Accessibility

Quit BW

Close all apps

Restart phone

Upon restart, run BW and re-enable the 4 options above.

Seems to be working for me. If needed, before you restart, you could go to Apps (on Android) and open BW and Clear Cache, and could even Clear Data, then restart, then re-enable the 4 options.

Please let me know if this helped.

[THEOCKID]

@larena1 pls chill a little. These guys aren't some big mega-company. And what does BW cost you? $10 a year? Let's have some empathy here.

And BTW, I have tried Keeper, having thought of jumping ship from BW. It's pretty, but also not nearly as functional as BW. I know, BW isn't for everyone (I'm a function over form guy), but it's pretty solid and I've been using it for .... 6+ years now?

@larena1 pls try my technique above, lemme know if it works for you

[yurividal]

So I got a new Pixel 6 Pro, and had issues, but I've figured out how to get it to work and it hasn't failed me in >2 days (and I use BW a TON!):

Go into BW on your phone

Go to Auto-fill Services, and turn off everything: 1st Use Inline Autofill, then Auto-fill Service. Then Use Draw-Over, then Use Accessibility

Quit BW

Close all apps

Restart phone

Upon restart, run BW and re-enable the 4 options above.

Seems to be working for me. If needed, before you restart, you could go to Apps (on Android) and open BW and Clear Cache, and could even Clear Data, then restart, then re-enable the 4 options.

Please let me know if this helped.

The thing is that for android 11 and 12, we should NOT be using Draw over and accessibility. These are legacy methods that do not use the built-in auto-fill api.

Even if this is a workaround, it's not a valid one. The bitwarden team needs to look into what is causing the bitwarden autofill agent to go into sleep.

[larena1]

Autofill does work for the most part but there's issues like bitwarden filling the password into the username field on PayPal eBay Google login etc and little issues like https://github.com/bitwarden/mobile/issues/1509 that could be fixed easily... If anybody was working on it but that's not the case and it's a pity

[THEOCKID]

OK, I've given you a method to get it to work, @yurividal . Maybe BW isn't for you. Try 1Password or LastPass, see how they work.

@larena1 : I'm not sure how you have determined that "(nobody is) working on it". @kspearrin and (sorry, forgot the other guys name) (@tgreer-bw , sorry) are on here all the time. As above, maybe a diff PW manager would be better for you. Putting negativity on this site may make you feel better, but it's really doing nothing to forward the cause for BW.

let's buck up, campers. If you wanna help, help. If you wanna complain, then be pleasant/positiive, or just shove off.

[heiserhorn]

I personally stopped using BW because of the Android performance. Inline Autofill not working reliably. Some sites not recognized at all. I appreciate the workarounds but satisfying my needs at the moment. Will come back in the future to see where we stand on this.

[olfek]

@heiserhorn What are you using instead? I'm planning to do the same.

[heiserhorn]

@olfek I am trying a few and have not decided yet.

[julian-alarcon]

I found a workaround for Firefox here https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20987#issuecomment-904772802

Workaround for this: 1- tap to password area 2- press to three dot to open Firefox menu 3- press outside of menu to close it

Also, there is bugzilla report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1693152

This is also reported in issue https://github.com/bitwarden/mobile/issues/1479

[ghost]

https://myid.telstra.com/identity/as/authorization.oauth2?redirect_uri=com.telstra.mobile.android.mytelstra%3A%2F%2Foauth2redirect&client_id=mytelstra-mobile-android&response_type=code&prompt=login&state=jh7Hle0JfHGCCk5S3YuT4g&scope=openid%20app.mytelstra.mobile%20m2w&code_challenge=Ppa1bnRLC6Ei9ig_rmWTooxv6BurGm-V_PccX-SGnlE&code_challenge_method=S256

The Username box does not get detected by Bitwarden at all until you enter the username, and then tap continue to reveal the password box.

[novocaiin]

OK, I've given you a method to get it to work, @yurividal . Maybe BW isn't for you. Try 1Password or LastPass, see how they work.

I don't want to give all my passwords to yet another party.

[huangtaizia]

When I open encrypted pdf file by pdf viewer of Google Drive, the BW dialog is appeared and closed immediately, cannot taps on to open BW to select the password saved. I thinking about that BW dialog cannot draw-over any dialog of the others application

[toxic0berliner]

I find autofill generally works unless for the sites where I changed the url comparison method to "exact". Can maybe someone look into it, I don't know how to check if the browser passes à wrong url, or if bitwarden isn't able to do the comparison, but I have confirmed that the url is exactly the same but bitwarden isn't showing the item as result. Even searching manually in bw app it doesn't check. My url is set to exact and looks like https://organizr.example.com/#mytab Works perfectly in Firefox extension on windows but not in the android app

[douglasparker]

It feels like autofill is only getting worse with each major update to Android...

It's working less than half of the time for me on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra running Android 12.

[larena1]

It feels like autofill is only getting worse with each major update to Android...

It's working less than half of the time for me on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra running Android 12.

Did you give other apps a try to see if the issues are specific to Bitwarden or your device / OS?

But yeah it's been more than 9 months since the big announcement that they're actively working on autofill and yet results still remain to be seen and there has been radio silence for more than six months already.

[THEOCKID]

I've been a huge bitwarden proponent, but even I am finally getting tired of manually filling fields. Sorry, it's become a pain in the ass. So I'm going back to trialing Keeper and 1password. Maybe BW is more focused on their commercial/enterprise customers. Not sure. Hell, I'm not even sure they're reading GitHub comments. #disappointed

[douglasparker]

It feels like autofill is only getting worse with each major update to Android...

It's working less than half of the time for me on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra running Android 12.

Did you give other apps a try to see if the issues are specific to Bitwarden or your device / OS?

I took a look at 1Password again, and the autofill API works flawlessly every time.

It works so well that I've barely used my annual family subscription with Bitwarden, and I am eager to migrate over right away.

But yeah it's been more than 9 months since the big announcement that they're actively working on autofill and yet results still remain to be seen and there has been radio silence for more than six months already.

Yeah, I didn't realize how bad autofill had gotten with Bitwarden until I gave 1Password a try again.

The level of support by the Bitwarden team has been horrible, too. The lack of communication speaks for itself.

I'm also a huge Bitwarden supporter. I self host Bitwarden as well, and as much as I love open source software, I can't continue to support software that is broken on a fundamental level.

I'm sure that I am far from being the only one who is sick and tired of switching apps to log in to services.

[vvolkgang]

Hey everyone! We recently made some improvements to the Android Accessibility Service fixing issues that previously impacted our autofill functionality, it's included in our recent release, currently in each platform store reviewing process.

We failed to communicate that here and for that I'm truly sorry. The team has been actively looking for ways to improve Autofill in Android, some of the ideas we tried failed to accommodate the whole range of Android versions + devices we support but, just wanted to let everyone know that we're still going at it and trying to improve.

Thanks for your feedback and support, let me know if the new release improves this.

[THEOCKID]

this may be a case of too little too late. I tried Keeper, eh, not great, but 1 Password seems to be fitting the bill. Autofill actually works (shocking!). GUI superior as well. I actually upgraded to their business version as it allows multiple 2FA yubikeys (The basic version allows for a TOTP and a physical key).

Dang BW. It's been a long ride. I'll check back in a year or so.

[yurividal]

Hey everyone! We recently made some improvements to the Android Accessibility Service fixing issues that previously impacted our autofill functionality, it's included in our recent release, currently in each platform store reviewing process.

We failed to communicate that here and for that I'm truly sorry. The team has been actively looking for ways to improve Autofill in Android, some of the ideas we tried failed to accommodate the whole range of Android versions + devices we support but, just wanted to let everyone know that we're still going at it and trying to improve.

Thanks for your feedback and support, let me know if the new release improves this.

Does this mean we need to use the accessibility service? Its supposed to be a legacy method, replaced by the autofill API since Android 11

[larena1]

https://github.com/bitwarden/mobile/commits/master/src/Android/Autofill

Looking at the history, apart from adding new browsers' app ids to the list of supported browsers, there is only 1 PR that included functional changes of autofill handling.

https://github.com/bitwarden/mobile/commit/52024109f7bfd6ae36c6273d03076242c99fd63f

And that does only affect the save prompt for credentials so there seem to be no improvements at all to reliability and quality of autofill itself unfortunately.

@vvolkgang thanks though for at least giving us an update

EDIT:

https://github.com/bitwarden/mobile/pull/1673

There was indeed another PR targeting Accessibility Service, which should now work correctly on Android 11+.

What still remains though is issues like https://github.com/bitwarden/mobile/issues/1509 and that it will fill the password into username fields when logging in to Google, Microsoft, eBay, Paypal etc..

[JoshuaGloriod]

You guys probably already know, but I've found all troubles with Bitwarden went away with following DKMA's recommended settings. Mentioning just in case.

As seen in this issue https://github.com/urbandroid-team/dont-kill-my-app/issues/307#issue-837495424

I still have the mentioned problem with fields, but Bitwarden now does recognize when it should autofill now. I've looked into that a bit, but not confident on the exact reason yet.

By the way, I highly recommend following their advice, it made battery life much better as well.

[bill-mcgonigle]

This has been bugging me for a long time (Android 11, LineageOS) and by following a few threads here I believe I have isolated my problem to "Battery Manager". After turning it off I don't have to constantly relaunch Bitwarden to get autofill.

I do not see Bitwarden using even 1% of the battery in the usage stats (it's too low to show up) so I don't know /why/ it was getting killed. If there's something that could be done programmatically or in the manifest to avoid being reaped by Battery Manager that might help. In theory I should not have to turn it off to use Bitwarden—one presumes that feature isn't fundamentally incompatible with autofill services. n.b. I already had Bitwarden set to 'not optimized' so this is something different.

[ae5960e8-a6fc-491f-b252-898ecf59af95]

iodé Browser does not autofill as it should. com.iode.firefox

[syed-ammar]

I had the problem for Spotify and Formula1 android app. Enabling Accessibility worked for Spotify app, but for Formula1 it is asking me to create new item even though i have that on my list

[brotaxt]

This has been bugging me for a long time (Android 11, LineageOS) and by following a few threads here I believe I have isolated my problem to "Battery Manager". After turning it off I don't have to constantly relaunch Bitwarden to get autofill.

I do not see Bitwarden using even 1% of the battery in the usage stats (it's too low to show up) so I don't know /why/ it was getting killed. If there's something that could be done programmatically or in the manifest to avoid being reaped by Battery Manager that might help. In theory I should not have to turn it off to use Bitwarden—one presumes that feature isn't fundamentally incompatible with autofill services. n.b. I already had Bitwarden set to 'not optimized' so this is something different.

This is exactly what I did and I couldn't recognize most of the issues that are reported here.

[THEOCKID]

Hey! Laughing at myself cause the recent post got me to look at Settings:Apps:Bitwarden:Battery and lo and behold ... I wasn't unrestricted! Damn you Samsung! Now I fixed it and will see how it goes! Thanks everyone!

[douglasparker]

For what it’s worth, that didn’t fix it for me either. I always disable battery optimization for Bitwarden the moment I get a new phone and the issues persist.

I just switched to iPhone and all of my issues have been resolved. I’m no longer interested in dealing with bugs with the autofill API.

Google seems to ignore major bugs in their issue tracker for years. I’m a huge android fan but I’ve recently made the decision to completely switch ecosystems.

[MrPeanut12]

For anyone using Firefox Nightly on Android, a bug has been resolved which fixed autofill for me (using Android 9).

[Bug 1770010]: Autofill fails, when I need to unlock bitwarden.

[novocaiin]

Will this ever be resolved in Chromium?