Windows / Firefox 33.1.1 password autofill stopped working
After asking Firefox to remember the password and returning to the login screen, both username and password are empty which is ok.
What used to happen was I clicked on the username and chose the appropriate name from the Firefox memory dropdown. It would autofill the corresponding password.
This last part stopped working, not sure exactly when, but may be connected to the latest recent Firefox update. I can still select from the dropdown, but the password field is no longer filled (it just remains empty).
I read every support article I could find, tried every suggestion, reset everything, cleared all cookies, disabled all plugins, ran in safe mode, none of it helped. I tried the debbuger & browser consoles, no error messages.
I can see the correct password is stored in the password manager. There are no site exceptions anywhere in the options panel. I deleted the password from the pw manager and had Firefox remember it anew - no joy.
There are no autofill autocomplete or options set. To be doubly sure, I created a small site with just plain input type=email and input type=password fields. Again, everything is saved correctly in the password manager but won't autofill.
A colleague of mine has the exact same problem under Vista.
What else could I try?
All Replies (8)
I understand that even as the default settings there to store the password, but they are not auto-completing. Please check these options:
For forms, go to Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Forms and uncheck the option to save form data when entering forms. (or in this case check it)
For passwords, go to Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Passwords and uncheck the option to remember passwords. Note that passwords can be stored in an encrypted format.(or make sure its checked)
Some web pages can send a code to browsers that disable auto-fill passwords. However, I have found that form filling add-ons are not effected by this.
Go to the Mozilla Add-ons Web Page {web link} (There’s a lot of good stuff here) and search for what you want.
Thanks, but as mentioned, the passwords are remembered (i.e. the option is checked) and it also happens on a freshly created site where nothing which might prevent autofill is set.
There are various posts suggesting addons, but, as website creators, we have customers which don't want to touch addons and thus really would like to understand what might be the cause, rather than just gloss over it.
The website might be using autocomplete=off if auto-fill isn't working.
Firefox won't auto-fill saved form data automatically when autocomplete=off is used. In that case you need to start typing the name to get a drop-down list.
as mentioned, it also happens with a freshly created site where no autocomplete=off is set
Some added toolbar and anti-virus add-ons are known to cause Firefox issues. Disable All of them.
See if these help;
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/usernames-and-passwords-are-not-saved
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-login-issues-on-websites-require-passwords
Got back on this today and finally found out whats causing it: a hidden honeypot textbox had been added to the page, and Firefox seems to no longer know where to put the password. So even though both username & pw are saved correctly in the password manager, the pw iis not filled in.
New username/pws don't save correctly in the first place (only the domain and pw are saved but not the username). Perhaps the text is taken from the empty honeypot, or it doesn't know which to use and leaves the username empty.
Either way, the only way around it at present seems to be to disable the honeypot, which is less than ideal (changing the textboxes to ids such as 'UserName' and 'Password' did not help).
tony-007 trɔe
Tony,
Glad you sussed out what was happening.
Just a quick idea about a potential solution:
It might be that when the new field was added to the webpage, the IDs for the username and password fields could have changed. It's these IDs that Firefox uses to remember where to fill in your username and password.
You could use the mobile password manager addon to reset the field IDs that Firefox is using.
- Check the HTML source of the webpage. Both the username and password fields should have an ID (something like <input id="username" >). Make a note of what these are
- Install the mobile password manager addon
- Press Alt-T to open the Tools menu -> Password Manager - > Manage Passwords
- Hit Ctrl+F and search for the web address of the page
- Once you've found it, click the pencil icon on the right hand side
- The "username field" and "password field" boxes on this page will contain the old IDs. Update them with the new ones from stage 1 and save.
Thanks,
Jayelbe