Autocomplete on login forms: how do browsers designate input fields to be username/password?

[Sebi2020]

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Securing_your_site/Turning_off_form_autocompletion

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

The autocomplete attribute and login fields

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

The page explains that the autocomplete attribute on "login forms" is ignored but does not explain the exact conditions under which a browser designates an input field to be username or password input field. Is it the label, is it the name? How to avoid undefined behaviour?

What did you expect to see?

Clear conditions under which a field is recognized to be an login input.

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

No response

Do you have anything more you want to share?

Consider to disable this. It does not work as expected under all conditions.

MDN metadata

Page report details

• Folder: en-us/web/security/securing_your_site/turning_off_form_autocompletion
• MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Securing_your_site/Turning_off_form_autocompletion
• GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/security/securing_your_site/turning_off_form_autocompletion/index.md
• Last commit: abcebf4
• Document last modified: 2022-05-17T13:23:31.000Z

[Josh-Cena]

This is addressed extensively in https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Attributes/autocomplete already. It just needs a name or id.