Autofill in Microsoft Edge

Microsoft

Autofill of forms is a feature familiar to most Microsoft Edge customers (or for that matter, users of most modern browsers). In the next version of Microsoft Edge too, you can expect the browser to remember your passwords for all your favorite websites and help you fill in your address and credit card details with one-click whenever you come across these forms online. In this post, we will cover some of these features that you’ve come to depend on and use in your everyday life.

 

View and Delete passwords within Microsoft Edge itself
Earlier, one needed to go to Windows Settings > Credentials Manager to view and delete saved passwords. Now this functionality is available within Microsoft Edge browser itself. You can View (after authenticating) and Delete your saved passwords in Settings > Profiles > Passwords.

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Autofill suggestions made more usable
These changes have been made to improve the form suggestions experience.

 

Full preview of address data with field highlighting
Filling an address form can sometimes involve effort even with autofill, especially when you have multiple similar addresses saved. Microsoft Edge lets you preview your autofill data for all suggestions within the same dropdown itself, making it easier to choose the right address to fill. 
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To help you quickly select the autofill suggestion, the value corresponding to the field currently in focus is highlighted in the suggestions.

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Ease of access for credentials
In login forms, Microsoft Edge now offers the ability to choose a credential pair both from the username field as well as the password field.


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Browser data import for a seamless transition 

A possible roadblock to try out a new browser is the unavailability of data that’s important to you, such as your favorites, passwords and other autofill data. Microsoft Edge smoothly overcomes this hurdle by making your passwords, payment info and addresses available right from the first launch.

 

Upon browser setup, you may choose to keep your data from another browser. If so, you will find all your form data under Settings > Profile and you can manage your data as needed. If you have credit cards that are linked to your Microsoft account, you will not be able to view them yet in the autofill interface. This will be available soon.

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There is also an option to import all your autofill data on-demand, again through Settings > Profile. Remember that your existing data set will be replaced by the new data you import.

 

Sync autofill data across your devices
Work on syncing data across different devices is currently underway – expect these changes to reflect in the upcoming builds.

 

Control over your autofill data
As a Microsoft Edge user, you have full control on the autofill feature as well as your autofill data. It is important to us that you can easily view, delete and manage your personal data at any point of time. You can also enable/disable the whole feature for passwords, payment info and addresses, respectively.

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Looking ahead
This is just the beginning. We know that your time is super valuable. And every second that we spare you from typing out your details each time you shop online, or every bit of mind space we free up from remembering a complex password, counts. Which is why, in the new Microsoft Edge it is important that you get a reliable autofill experience that works intuitively whenever you come across a form on the web.


And to get there, we need your help. You can help us by sharing examples of areas where autofill in Microsoft Edge can do better.

 

We look forward to your inputs!

76 Replies
Yes, i would like to backup it in onedrive just like the microsoft launcher let us do (but do it automatically in this case)
I would like to suggest to enable better mass deletion of password entries. Currently there are three dots (click) - then select delete (click). At least one too many. And it would easily avoid the unnecessary confusion of where to find basic editing functions. Ok admit, I hate that pest of picture guesing everywhere. How to better build this can be seen for those passwords grouped under "never saved". Clear signal what the button is supposed to do. Does it in simple, straight forward action.
> I'm not a fan of saving sensitive information automatically. I think it requires the clarification that passwords are not saved automatically. Each one requires the user to confirm each password to be saved. And it think nobody should take that control away - neither by never saving nor by always saving pwds. In my experience a concious decision is required for every site. Some I trust, others I don't. And that is what I end up with: the list shows where I never saved a pwd. Looking thru my list, the list is about right. Only desire I would have is to enable better mass deletion. Just posted that response a min ago.

 


@Eric_Lawrence wrote:
That said, it remains "By-Design" that every profile running in the Edge browser, even within a single Windows User Account, has partitioned credentials that are not shared with any other profile.


 

OK. I maintain that it's bad design!

 


I'm not clear on what benefit you'd obtain by having all profiles' credentials to be placed into the Windows User account's OS Credential Manager as well; 

@Eric_Lawrence 

 

I wonder if we're talking at cross-purposes here. I have for many years used the Credential Manager as the central repository for all my usernames and passwords. I just did a little test: I viewed the password in CM for a site where I changed it a couple of days ago on a different machine. I then visited the site using Edge Classic and used the autofill to attempt to log in. Of course it failed, so I tried again, this time with the new password. Success. Edge then asked whether I'd like to save the changed password, and I said Yes. After closing and re-opening CM, I could see that the password there had been updated, with the standard legacy remark that it had been saved by Internet Explorer. Had I used Dev instead, this CM entry would not have been updated.  

 

If I've understood correctly,

  • IE stores passwords in CM - does it also retrieve them from there?
  • Edge stores passwords in its own vault and also in CM. Autofill entries are retrieved from the Edge vault.
  • Dev and Canary store passwords only in the browser profile and retrieves them from there.

All I want is for the new browser also to save passwords in the CM. I wouldn't expect it to retrieve them from there, but from its own vault. Otherwise, I could end up having different stored passwords for the same site depending on which browser profile I happened to be using on which machine when I last changed it. 

 

The passwords I currently see when using Dev on this machine were imported from Edge when I first set it up. 

 

This is a potential nightmare. One small addition to the current set-up might help: write the date-last-saved to the Details card for each stored credential. At least then it would be possible to track down the latest one.

>IE stores passwords in CM - does it also retrieve them from there? Edge stores passwords in its own vault and also in CM.

IE and (legacy) Edge store and retrieve credentials *exclusively* from the Windows Credential Manager.

New Edge does not use the Windows Credential manager for either storage OR retrieval.

@Eric_Lawrence 

 

I recently had occasion to curse this arrangement. Windows Update was really insistent about upgrading my 32GB kitchen tablet to Win10 1903. I had very little of the 32GB left, so I'm afraid Canary had to go along with a lot of other stuff. The uninstaller asked if I wanted to 'retain browser data,' so I did, only ditching cached files and images. I managed to clear 9.5GB and the upgrade went ahead with no problems. 

 

I then re-installed Canary on the machine, and guess what? The first time I tried to log in here, there were no autofill data! All the hundreds of credential pairs had gone, and the ones I had added in the months since I started using Canary weren't in Windows Credential Manager either, of course. 

 

This wasn't a total disaster, partly because I had a paper record of cryptic password hints. Better still, not really trusting Canary's promise to retain my data across the un- and re-installation, I had uploaded Canary's User Data folder to OneDrive. Sniffing around there, I located the Login Data ... files. With a little prayer, I replaced the empty ones in the new installation with the backed-up ones and all my credentials came back. 

 

I wonder what an 'ordinary' user would have done. It would have been so much less worrying had the passwords been salted away in CM.

 

@Eric_Lawrence 

Sorry, our posts crossed. 

 


IE and (legacy) Edge store and retrieve credentials *exclusively* from the Windows Credential Manager.

So why can't New Edge do the same? I just cannot see why Edge makes it necessary to have to maintain multiple disconnected sets of credentials, many of which might be for the same sites. 

Sadly, this is the kind of integration that's sacrificed to being cross platform and syncing (or maybe just because that's not what Chrome does - because I'm sure the cred manager already syncs to other PCs for Edge - and does new Edge use the keychain on mac OS?)
i'm new here so sorry if my question is in the wrong place, considering the BETA stage is it safe to log in to websites normally? I mean social networks, traditional non-banking sites

@viniciusbezerra - Yes, Edge is ready for general use. Many of us have been using it as our default browser for many months. You might find occasional bugs and other problems that are corrected as new updates are released, but it's unlikely that you'll hit any serious problems.

@viniciusbezerra 

Hi Vini & welcome,

This is a fine, if not perfect place for your question & the answer is YES.  Naturally & certainly, being betas, these are not finished products, but, they are safe to use.  I should add, IF you are running the Beta Channel, although it receives updates as infrequently as every 6 wks, it is the most 'solid' of the 3; stays stagnant longer, but, will have the fewest 'issues'.

Cheers,
Drew
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@Elliot Kirk 

Is it me or does the autofill text use a static font size? I'm getting the behavior that the text is a bit smaller than what my CSS (Bootstrap) specifies for the login form. When I click on the text field the font will immediately adjust to the correct size. It's just on that initial render and autofill that the size isn't quite correct.

@Elliot Kirk Just a suggestion but I would really love the password generation feature that Chrome has. Since switching full time to Edge Chromium I really really miss that feature and have reverted back to the same 4 or 5 passwords that I use haha. 

@Travis_O Thanks for your comment. I absolutely agree a password generator would be a big plus. I might consider getting rid of my password manager with this feature, especially now that i can export passwords off line too so i have a backup in case something goes wrong.

@leon_h Yeah when Chrome implemented it I got rid of my password manager. I'm thinking about getting a new one though since the Edge Chromium doesn't have that feature :( 

@Travis_O  thanks for the suggestion! Hear your need for password generation in the browser and we are working to address that.

@leon_h we hear you and are looking into this!