Merged 2 posts from Support native macOS & iOS Autofill API.
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Integrate with native password AutoFill
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.
Merged 2 posts from Password Autofill not Functioning with 3rd Party Apps.
8 months later
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.
- Edited
vkt I think you may still be misunderstanding what 'iCloud Keychain' is.
Keychain is just a fancy name for special type of secure storage provided by OS, used most commonly for storing data like passwords and certificates. This storage can be used by apps, and each app gets its own bucket in storage, and apps can not directly access each other storage in Keychain , but can through special APIs provided by Apple like the auto-fiill API which is currently available and developed to a differnent standard on iOS and macOS.
iCloud Keychain is just Keychain synced over your iCloud account to other devices.
Saying passwords are saved in 'iCloud Keychain" is meaningles unless you specify in which app's bucket in keychain they are saved in. I think you equate Safari passwords with 'icloud keychain passwords', just because you may not have used any other app before that natively uses keychain, like Orion does (for example other browsers like chrome and firefox do not use keychain on macos, they use their own propriatery storage on their servers).
Your (iCloud) Keychain now contains two buckets - Safari passwords and Orion passwords. If you also use a native password manager like Strongbox, you would also have Strongbox passwords in Keychain. 3rd party provider option in Orion specifies you do not want to use Orion's keychain passwords, but passwords stored in some other app's keychain, that integrated the native auto-fill feature.
With this in mind, can you rephrase your question/ask?
Ok. Thanks for the clarification. It's clear now.
My question is if it would be possible for Orion to suggest actual logins just how Safari does, specific to a given website? Because from what I see (and as I try to show in the screenshots above), it seems that it is possible to open Safari's keychain bucket after clicking on the "Passwords..." prompt from Orion, but it does not suggest individual or website specific password.
I think ttrv65ebyng is also trying to say the same thing. In their example, they are using Strongbox. Safari seems to be able to get into Strongbox's keychain bucket, however, Orion only shows the "Passwords..." prompt.
Hope it is clearer.