Disabling Android O auto-fill service for an application

Question

Android O has the feature to support Auto-filling for fields. Is there any way I can disable it for a specific application. That is I want to force my application not to use the auto-fill service.

Is it possible ?

To block autofill for an entire activity, use this in onCreate() of the activity:

getWindow()
  .getDecorView()
  .setImportantForAutofill(View.IMPORTANT_FOR_AUTOFILL_NO_EXCLUDE_DESCENDANTS);

Is there any better method than this ?

Watersoak

Autofill can cause a crash that is really obscure, occurs for us when a user changes focus to a previously filled textInputEditText inside a TextInputLayout: java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'void android.view.View.getBoundsOnScreen(android.graphics.Rect)' on a null object reference – Vibrato

fired a bug issuetracker.google.com/issues/67675432, please star it – Are

Create an activity class that is used for every other activity to inherit and add this code to it. – Conah

@Justin, This is fixed on Android 8.1, can you test it with 8.1 – Perr

I believe it can also cause TransactionTooLargeExceptions if it tries to autofill something like an EditText with > 1MB of data, which exceeds the limit of a Bundle. See the source for AutoFillManager. Workaround is to include android:importantForAutofill="noExcludeDescendants" in the View's xml. – Osier

Answer 1

Is it possible ?

Not that I am aware of. Certainly, nothing is documented.

Is there any better method than this ?

Not that I am aware of.

Beyond

This is fixed on Android 8.1, can you test it with 8.1 – Perr

Is it possible android:importantForAutofill="no" – Greeley

@appnweb31web: That is an attribute for views, not for an <application> in the manifest. – Beyond

Answer 2

Currently there is no direct way to disable the autofill for an entire application, since the autofill feature is View specific.

You can still try this way and call BaseActivity everywhere.

public class BaseActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
       super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
       disableAutofill();
    }

    @TargetApi(Build.VERSION_CODES.O)
    private void disableAutofill() { 
        getWindow().getDecorView().setImportantForAutofill(View.IMPORTANT_FOR_AUTOFILL_NO_EXCLUDE_DESCENDANTS);
    }
}

You can also force request autofill this way.

public void forceAutofill() {
    AutofillManager afm = context.getSystemService(AutofillManager.class);
    if (afm != null) {
        afm.requestAutofill();
    }
}

Note: At the moment autofill feature is only available in API 26 Android Oreo 8.0

Hope this helps!

Election

very nice! I'm going to mix this answer with API checking for Android 8.1; disable the bugged autofill in 8.0 but allow it in 8.1+. Otherwise I would spend over an hour putting the hint into TextInputLayout throughout the app. – Embree

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT == Build.VERSION_CODES.O) { getWindow().getDecorView().setImportantForAutofill(View.IMPORTANT_FOR_AUTOFILL_NO_EXCLUDE_DESCENDANTS); } – Embree

this answer doesn't work on Emulator (API 26): java.lang.NullPointerException: Attempt to invoke virtual method 'void android.view.View.getBoundsOnScreen(android.graphics.Rect)' on a null object reference – Embree

I can't get any effect of getDecorView().setImportantForAutofill(View.IMPORTANT_FOR_AUTOFILL_NO_EXCLUDE_DESCENDANTS) on Android 10. – Viaduct

Answer 3

I believe the accepted answer is incorrect:

So I have my own class which is extends the android.support.v7.widget.AppCompatEditText and all I did is overwrote the following method with the following value:

@Override
public int getAutofillType() {
    return AUTOFILL_TYPE_NONE;
}

no other solutions worked, not even android:importantForAutofill="no".

getAutofillType() comes from the View class, so it should work for every other class such as TextInputEditText too!

Valtin

This is the only working solution for now, it works good for TextInputEditText too! – Are

Added code example to showcase repo github.com/BukT0p/AutofillBug – Are

If you use any third party library with visual components that don't extend your base class, this won't work – Fontana

I confirm that this solution worked, while setting android:importantForAutofill="no" or android:importantForAutofill="noExcludeDescendants" on the EditText did not work. Tested on Oreo 8.0 (api level 26) and Android Pie (api level 28) emulators – Wharfage

Even though annoying to implement, this should be the accepted answer – Branch

Its 2022 and this is the only solution that works. – Petrel

This must be the accepted answer. Its been weeks I was stuck on this API to save custom passwords. Only this approach worked for me. – Tanishatanitansy

Answer 4

I ran into this too. It turns out the issue was caused by setting the hint text on the EditText nested inside the TextInputLayout.

I did some digging and found this nugget in the 26.0.0 Beta 2 release notes. Andorid Support Release Notes June 2017

TextInputLayout must set hints on onProvideAutofillStructure()

That led me to try setting the hint on the TextInputLayout instead of the nested EditText.

This resolved the crashing issue for me. Example:

            <android.support.design.widget.TextInputLayout
                android:id="@+id/textInputLayout"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:hint="Some Hint Text"
                android.support.design:hintAnimationEnabled="true"
                android.support.design:hintEnabled="true"
                android.support.design:layout_marginTop="16dp">

                <android.support.design.widget.TextInputEditText
                    android:id="@+id/editText"
                    android:layout_width="match_parent"
                    android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>

            </android.support.design.widget.TextInputLayout>

Boom

It solves only TextInputEditText bug, updated my repo(github.com/BukT0p/AutofillBug) with your solution. But there was similar bug for AutoCompleteTextView. In API 27 autofill works in sync mode and causes UI freezes and lags. So maybe it's better to disable autofill for views that should not be filled for sure – Are

Even if we use the other suggestions in this thread, to disable auto-fill, the user can still long press on a view and select auto-fill from the context menu. I have observed that in some cases you will be told a view cannot be autofilled, but I have not found that flag yet.I have seen some solutions that involve a custom view that returns NONE for autofill options, but that is not feasible for all implementations. – Boom

This solutions works for me. User can still long-click the input field and select autofill but it doesnt crash - it just do nothing. Thanks. – Sue

This approach works, but was the biggest PITA because my app has tons of activities. Note, I didn't use the lines starting with android.support.design just moving the hint parameter is all that's needed. – Embree

Answer 5

Seems to be a bug that needs to be fixed : https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/67675432
In the meanwhile a workaround for now is to disable the AutoFill feature for the whole project. You can add in the values-v26/styles.xml file the following style or you can edit your BaseEditTextStyle if you are using a specific style for your EditText views.

<style name="App_EditTextStyle" parent="@android:style/Widget.EditText">
<item name="android:importantForAutofill">noExcludeDescendants</item>
</style>

and in the values-v26/themes.xml file you can simply add to the default theme that you are using in your app the items editTextStyle and android:editTextStyle like following :

<style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
...
<item name="android:editTextStyle">@style/App_EditTextStyle</item>
<item name="editTextStyle">@style/App_EditTextStyle</item>
</style>

this way you can apply this changes for all your EditTexts without needing to change your layout files or Activities (and later on you can easily remove it when the bug is fixed).

Torquemada

Answer 6

Create custom EditText style and set android:importantForAutofill to no.

<style name="EditTextStyleWithoutAutoFill" parent="Widget.AppCompat.EditText">
    <item name="android:importantForAutofill">no</item>
</style>

Then in your activity theme set this style for editTextStyle.

<item name="android:editTextStyle">@style/EditTextStyleWithoutAutoFill</item>

Richia

importantForAutofill documented here developer.android.com/guide/topics/text/… – Archetype

I'll try this approach next, but merge it with res/values-v26/styles.xml to only affect Android 8.0, not 8.1 (I can' tbelieve Google released such a gigantic bug!) – Embree

Answer 7

In your EditText attributes add android:importantForAutofill="no" This should be a temporary fix and will only apply to api 26+

Clichy

how this is different from other answers? – Are

Answer 8

In my case, our app targets SDK version 21 but newer devices (26+) were still popping up the autocomplete. Pretty big problem if the app runs on devices that are shared between people. Using just android:importantForAutofill="no" did not work for me.

The only solution that I found to work in my case was:

<EditText
    android:importantForAutofill="no"
    tools:targetApi="o"
    android:autofillHints="AUTOFILL_HINT_SMS_OTP" ...

The reason I added android:autofillHints="AUTOFILL_HINT_SMS_OTP" was because if you long-pressed on the EditText it would still bring up autofill. Basically, I told the field's autofill that it is waiting for a text message that will never be sent. Bit of a hack, I know...

Note: you may have to add xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" to your schemas' if it is not there already.

True

That works for me. Did it cause you a problem on lower APIs? – Moncear

I can't speak to anything below Lollipop, haven't tested. But for Lollipop to latest, haven't had any issues since this was posted. – True

Answer 9

Had the same problem with API 28+ and disable Autofill. For me the only solution was to disable long click for my views.

                <com.google.android.material.textfield.TextInputEditText
                    android:layout_width="match_parent"
                    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                    android:longClickable="false"
                    android:text="@={model.emailAdress}"/>

Henri

Answer 10

With reference to Google issue tracker, it has been fixed.

This is fixed on Android 8.1

If any issue persists, please report at Google issue tracker they will re-open to examine.

Perr

This answer has nothing to do with the question. It does have something to do with the first comment on the question. – Beyond