1Password autofill suggestions between Safari and other browsers

harish_ravikumar

I have noticed a difference in the way 1Password works for password autofill between Safari and other browsers. In Safari, it automatically shows the relevant credentials, upon clicking it, an authentication with Face ID runs and then the password is filled subsequently.

In other browsers, there are no suggestions, rather we need to open the app and then select the user credentials (see screenshots below).
Why is 1Password works differently between native and 3rd party apps?

Ben

Hi @harish_ravikumar

That's a great question. The feature you're seeing / interacting with there is the iOS autofill feature, for which 1Password is a data provider. We don't have any direct control over the autofill UI / how autofill appears. I don't have any insight into why autofill functions differently in some browsers vs others, but I suspect it relates to what APIs are available to those browsers, which of them they choose to implement, and how they choose to implement them.

Ben

harish_ravikumar

@Ben thanks for your feedback.
If I understood it correctly, none of the 3rd party browsers like Firefox, Brave, Chrome has implemented the password manager API in a manner Safari does. And, it is also the case that 1Password DOES NOT restrict their own APIs for for these third party browsers in iOS platform.
We may have to wait for these browsers to effectively use the APIs for password managers.

Quick question in a similar line:
The password autofill functionality in Chrome, Firefox browsers in Windows via 1Password X add-on works in a same fashion irrespective of the browsers we use. Here the autofill is driven by the add-on (1P X) and not the browser itself. Is my understanding correct?

Ben

@harish_ravikumar

If I understood it correctly, none of the 3rd party browsers like Firefox, Brave, Chrome has implemented the password manager API in a manner Safari does. And, it is also the case that 1Password DOES NOT restrict their own APIs for for these third party browsers in iOS platform.
We may have to wait for these browsers to effectively use the APIs for password managers.

There isn't any 1Password code in the browsers in so far as autofill is concerned. There is a separate password manager extension that we developed and open sourced before autofill was a thing, but that isn't what you're seeing here (you can read more about that here: https://support.1password.com/1password-extension-ios/ )

It is very possible that what is available to 3rd party browsers on iOS is not the same as what Apple uses in Safari.

Quick question in a similar line:
The password autofill functionality in Chrome, Firefox browsers in Windows via 1Password X add-on works in a same fashion irrespective of the browsers we use. Here the autofill is driven by the add-on (1P X) and not the browser itself. Is my understanding correct?

Correct. On desktop operating systems the browsers offer an extension framework that we build on top of. It is a completely different model than what is available on iOS. The filling code on the desktop is ours. The filling code on iOS is Apple's.

Ben

harish_ravikumar

Hi @Ben Many thanks for your feedback and explanation.
Agree that no browser use 1Password’s code for their browsers, as it doesn’t make sense and also it has to be generic and should work for all password manager apps. I just thought that every password manager application offers the auto-fill API which is common irrespective of operating systems. Perhaps Apple may have higher leverage on its platform for Safari compared to other third party apps.

Regards,
Harish

Ben

You're very welcome. :+1: :)

Ben