I assume this would also mean that (iCloud) keychain password generation and autofill would work? It’s the one issue preventing me from replacing Safari with Orion.
57
Integrate with native password AutoFill
a month later
2 months later
- Edited
Vlad Just wanted to chime in my support for this feature request + anecdotes.
I use keepass for self-hosted password storage/syncing and on iOS I have Strongbox setup for autofilling natively instead of the iCloud keychain. Works wonderfully there.
On desktop however, I use a different keepass client app (KeeWeb) and its chrome extension for autofill since I use Brave and only Safari currently supports the native autofill on mac... After much effort though, i've not been able to get the extension to work with Orion.
This is really the last & biggest hurdle keeping me from moving over to Orion.
Put simply, in my case native autofill support would enable the benefits of:
- (obviously) integrating with the native & more secure password system
- being able to use Strongbox's native-first apps on both iOS and macOS
- not running an, admittedly small, electron app (KeeWeb) on desktop at all times
- not having to depend on a browser extension for autofill at all
- having autofill password access system-wide not just on the web
- making it instantly both practical and beneficial to switch to Orion full time
TL;DR
Adding native autofill support would, in web browsing contexts, be a silver bullet in my quest to optimize & streamline the overall desktop env + workflows following my recent upgrade to a new M1 macbook.
16 days later
I have been trying to get Orion to work with Strongbox and have had issues so far. I read a post here previously about Strongbox and it needing to be “aware” of Orion. I posted about this in the Strongbox subreddit and received a response from the developer that seems to indicate that Orion may need to do some work to integrate the macOS autofill API differently. This makes sense as it now uses the same one iOS does. Here is a link to the post.
There are similar issues here regarding integrating this API. I posted about this in Discord and am creating this issue to accompany the discussion.
2 months later
Merged 2 posts from Support native macOS & iOS Autofill API.
Minimalist, a password manager designed exclusively for Mac and iPhone/iPad, leverages Apple’s AutoFill system. While I don't yet have access to the iOS/iPadOS Orion app (awaiting an invite), Orion on the Mac seemingly doesn't currently leverage AutoFill. This post from Minimalist's help articles speaks towards the benefits regarding security, privacy, and convenience of AutoFill.
Do you have any idea how many other password managers leverage autofill on the desktop platform? I guess if there is a range of popular ones which do, this would make more sense. I must admit I wasn't aware of it on the desktop platform, as I have only ever seen it on i(Pad)OS since I don't use Safari on desktop.
gp I'm not aware of the implementations utilized for other Mac password manager apps. I presume most are exclusively utilizing their own extensions, from which there's privacy and convenience arguments to be had.
Additionally, with adoption of AutoFill, I don't believe its use would be limited to password manager apps.
5 days later
Autofill API exists only on iOS/iPadOS. AFAIK, the only way to use it on Mac is through SwiftUI which ports the same iOS API over, but very few apps use SwiftUI on Mac because of extreme limitations (Orion and Safari do not use it).
I am not sure what does work in Safari and how, would appreciate more information on this.
2 months later
I would love to see this feature, I use credit card, address, name/phone, autofill quite often in Safari on MacOS and miss it dearly in Orion. I'm not sure what is available API wise, but it looks like Safari AutoFill pulls from the Wallet and Contacts apps.
3 months later
Merged 7 posts from Add support for Apple's AutoFill system.
- Edited
Vlad no I don’t believe it is…
From what I gather however—as someone with little to no swift development experience—it seems like the way Apple has it setup is that as long as you code input fields to surface the 1st party keychain autofill UI, then any 3rd party autofill providers will also come up if enabled by the user…?
Purely speculative on my part though based on my personal observations and interpretation of Apple’s docs. Since installing Strongbox I don’t think I’ve ever seen an autofill field that didn’t also provide Strongbox as an option.
Steps to reproduce:
Use a password manager with a macOS Password Autofill API (introduced in Big Sur) compliant extension (In this case, Strongbox Pro). Open a page in Orion for which the password is saved and linked to the URL. Click on the relevant field and no passwords are suggested. Clicking on "Passwords..." presents no options either. Safari does present these passwords to the user on clicking the relevant fields.
Expected behavior:
Orion to present passwords sourced from any app that has an Autofill extension enabled. (System Preferences > Extensions > Autofill)
Orion, OS version; hardware type:
Orion Version 0.99.113.2-beta, macOS 12.2.1 (21D62), M1 MacBook Air 2020 (MacBookAir10,1)
Image/Video:
Orion does not yet support the Autofill API. It will soon support it in a following release.