Integrate with native password AutoFill
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
Is it now supported? Because I still see the same behavior as mentioned by ttrv65ebyng above. Except that I can click on "Passwords...", and Orion will pop up the list of login/passwords saved in macOS. But Orion still does not suggest any saved login. I am on Version 0.99.122-beta (WebKit 615.1.11.7) running on Mac mini M1 (macOS Ventura 13.1 build 22C65). Maybe I am missing something?
Note that that I not using a third party password manager but the macOS builtin one.
- Edited
Yes, by "built-in", I meant the passwords saved in the iCloud Keychain. Previously, one could only access those through Keychain Access but now it is possible to get to them either through Safari or via System Settings / Passwords.
So what you are saying is that there isn't a way to directly use the iCloud Keychain... One would still need to import those passwords into Orion's keychain? I thought it could work seamlessly without having two separate keychains. I just want to have a single place for my passwords, irrespective of the browser I use.
And maybe what I said above is not clear. Attached are 3 screenshots for Linkedin.com to show the difference between the behaviors of Safari and Orion that might make it clearer.
- How Safari suggests an actual login name
- How Orion just shows an option to click Passwords...
- Orion does open a list of passwords saved in the iCloud Keychain or System Keychain, whatever is the correct name for it.
- My settings for Orion. BTW, this pane is a bit confusing like this --at least for me. When I have selected "3rd Party Provider", it still shows me the "Passwords" button below, which only opens the Orion's Keychain.
