Autofill works in Firefox but not Fennec

refi64
refi64
Community Member

I've been playing around with mobile Firefox and its derivatives lately, but I've noticed something odd. If I try to use autofill in both browsers, Firefox works, but with Fennec, 1password cannot detect what the current URL is.

For instance, if I try to sign into my Firefox account on the addons page. With the Firefox app, 1Password correctly shows my Firefox account login. If I visit the same exact URL in Fennec, the autofill dropdown only contains "search in 1password" and "create new login". If I select the former and then choose the Firefox account, it then adds an association with Fennec and the given account.

In other words: Fennec gets treated like a regular app instead of a browser, and thus the autofill dropdown never picks up the current URL. I'd think this was an FF issue, except the normal Firefox app works...

Comments

  • Hello @refi64 thanks for reaching out to us.

    I've done some testing with the Fennec browser in the past and I was able to reproduce the behavior you're describing. It seems that Fennec does not support Autofill in the same way that Firefox does which is causing it to be detected like an app. Hopefully Fennec will have Autofill support in the future.

    In the mean time I would suggest sticking with Firefox or a different Autofill supported app such as DuckDuckGo or Opera Touch.

  • refi64
    refi64
    Community Member

    @ag_timothy thanks for the response! Out of curiosity, though, is there any way to know how it is that 1password decides if an app is a browser or not? In particular, I believe Firefox 93 removed all the runtime flags around autofill, but Fennec's build still isn't working, and I'm not really aware of any ways it customizes this...but I also can't actually tell how this check is performed in the first place.

  • Hi @refi64, I'd be happy to clarify how 1Password identifies browsers...

    We store a list of known browsers within 1Password that identifies apps by a combination of their package name and signature. Any apps that are included in that list are treated as browsers (as in 1Password attempts to determine the URL of the web page), otherwise they are treated as regular apps.

    We're somewhat careful about which browsers we add to this list as each browser we add requires additional testing and maintenance to ensure that it works well with both the Autofill and Accessibility frameworks in Android. At the moment, the list includes versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet, Brave, Duck Duck Go, and Vivaldi. Since this list doesn't include Fennec, it is treated as an app rather than a browser.

    I hope that explanation helps to clarify the behaviour that you're seeing!

  • refi64
    refi64
    Community Member

    @mverde so in that case, there isn't anything Fennec could actually do to work around this, right? In that case, is there any chance at all of having Fennec support in 1password? (Note that it's just a rebuilt Firefox w/o tracking and a few minor changes, not nearly as big of a fork as, say, Chrome vs Samsung Internet or the other examples mentioned.)

  • @refi64 that's correct, there isn't anything that Fennec needs to do as this aspect of the behaviour is entirely determined by 1Password. We could potentially update 1Password to recognize Fennec as a browser, but I want to be careful not to promise anything here. As I mentioned in my previous reply, there is a cost associated with supporting each browser that we add, even when the differences between browsers are relatively minor. It is something that I can review with my team though.

  • refi64
    refi64
    Community Member

    Well thanks for looking into it anyway!

  • ag_ana
    ag_ana
    1Password Alumni

    On behalf of mverde, you are welcome @refi64! And thank you again for sharing your feedback with us :)

This discussion has been closed.