Autofill itself is not new to Android of course the changes are afoot with new autofill functionality set to arrive on Android soon according to the Android Developers website.
Beginning with Android 11 keyboards will be able to “display autofill suggestions in-line” — eg. in the suggestion strip above the keyboard. Due to the possible sensitive nature of some of these suggestions they are hidden from the IME until selected by the user.
The changes were spotted last month by Mishaal Rahman of XDA and can be seen below:
Here are the 4 types of autofill suggestions in Gboard and/or Android 11: form filling, 2FA verification, smart responses, and search query suggestions.
(I see you, dogfood logo on the spacebar!) pic.twitter.com/GLevoUrqJm
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) July 17, 2020
The new feature will require both the IME keyboard and the password manager to be updated with support for the new feature and if one of them does not support it then the suggestions will be shown in a dropdown menu as they are currently in Android 10.
The autofill options seem to support a range of type of suggestions including MFA codes, smart replies, search queries, credit cards and more. So far it has been seen to be working with Gboard and 1Password (beta versions of both of these along with the Android 11 Beta) but it is only a matter of time before it arrives on more keyboards and more password apps.
We all would like to simplify our lives and while at this stage we cannot see how you would first have to authenticate your password app (ie. log in with fingerprint etc) you can be sure Google will add the required security to the feature when it arrives in stable form. Yet another thing to look forward to with Android 11. Hopefully app developers jump onboard this feature quickly as it looks to be very handy.
