Chrome is getting a nice quality-of-life lift, thanks to new autofill features that use your Google account and Wallet to speed up the process of completing forms and checking out. The updates broaden what Chrome can detect and recommend, increase the readability of selections on mobile and address more real-world edge cases — especially for addresses and names.
What’s new in Chrome Autofill across accounts and Wallet
Log in to Chrome, and at the moment you tap on a form field, Chrome will show suggestions based on your interactions with your Google account. That includes your name and email, along with home and work addresses you previously saved to your account, so commonly filled fields are prefilled with a bit less friction.
- What’s new in Chrome Autofill across accounts and Wallet
- Smoother form suggestions on mobile with clearer choices
- Better at real-world forms, names and local address formats
- Privacy and security context for cards, addresses and autofill
- Why it matters: fewer errors and faster checkouts for users
- Availability and how to use it on Android and desktop today
Chrome also picks up a trick from Google Wallet: loyalty cards. If a site requests a membership number — such as for grocery rewards or to enter the hotel loyalty program, say — Big G can now surface eligible cards from Wallet and pop in the pertinent info. It’s a little change that will have an outsize effect for anyone who finds herself searching through apps or past emails to find her member ID.
Those refinements follow on from the improvements first released last year that allowed Chrome to automatically fill in niche fields such as vehicle information (including a license plate number when you sign up for parking). The result is an autofill system that’s more comprehensive than the name, address and card number pattern we’re used to.
Smoother form suggestions on mobile with clearer choices
Chrome on Android is working to make suggestions easier to browse. When you swipe, automatically filled-in suggestions now span two lines, so there’s more room to see the full context of what you’re about to select — an email plus its associated account label, or a complete street address instead of just a truncated curb number. That’s important on a small screen where just one mis-tap can slow checkout to a crawl.
“The change looks modest, but it cuts back on the ‘which one are they now?’ speculation that frequently compels users to flip back and forth. In usability studies, bigger and more legible choice lists have overwhelmingly increased both precision and speed of selection (such gains accumulate in multistep checkouts).”
Better at real-world forms, names and local address formats
Out of the box, forms are irregular. Chrome’s parsing has also been improved to handle address conventions that do not cleanly map to standard fields — think instructions that point at cross-streets, landmarks and so on — and to better identify names with phonetic components (phonetic name support is coming soon). This can provide a significant help in areas where non-Latin writing systems or local address formats are used.
Under the hood, Chrome’s autofill is a combination of field heuristics and standardized schemas. Google has a pretty impressive record for contributing to open tooling like its address formatting libraries and is engaged in web standards work via the W3C, so broader changes here also have a ripple effect across the ecosystem.
Privacy and security context for cards, addresses and autofill
And autofill functionality does not come at the cost of measures intended to keep things secure. Device-wide authentication still exists to protect card numbers, and Chrome will continue to request CVC entry or biometric confirmation on-device before displaying saved cards. You can see your saved addresses and payment methods in Chrome settings or in your Google account at any time, and easily edit or delete them.
And on top of that, autofill won’t ever get triggered in the first place unless the fields have been explicitly interacted with by the user, and developers can fine-tune behavior with HTML autocomplete attributes. That blend is good for striking a balance between speed and control.
Why it matters: fewer errors and faster checkouts for users
Checkout friction continues to be one of the biggest conversion killers. Long or complicated checkouts are among the top reasons shoppers abandon carts, according to research from Baymard Institute, alongside surprise fees and account creation demands. Even incremental savings in input time and errors can result in impactful gains for retailers, not to mention less frustration for users.
The loyalty card integration is a muted victory for brands as well. Redemption rates and engagement skyrocket when program IDs are more easily applied — a pattern that has been evidenced by several retailers and payments providers accelerating the process of applying rewards.
Availability and how to use it on Android and desktop today
The updates are now available in Chrome on Android and desktop. Get started at your location by signing into Chrome with your Google account, then ensure your addresses are up to date in your account settings and add relevant cards — both payment and loyalty, through Google Wallet. Keep an eye out on Android for the longer two-line suggestions during form entry; look forward to seeing more of that account-based autofill magic on desktop, minus the mobile layout changes.
For developers, implementing the correct autocomplete attributes for your forms and testing them against real-world address formats will go a long way toward making Chrome’s new form filling experience shine. For everyone else, the surest sign that these fixes are working is rather simple: You’re going to spend less time typing and more time hitting your stride as soon as you get started.
