Safari Will No Longer Save Passwords Without Usernames in iOS 15.4

In the iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, and macOS Monterey 12.3 betas, Apple has added a minor quality of life improvement to the way Safari saves passwords. At the current time, Safari will gladly save a password without a username, which can lead to confusion later, but that's no longer the case in the beta updates.

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When you are prompted to save a password to iCloud Keychain in iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4, or macOS Monterey 12.3 and Safari has only detected a password, Safari will pop up a window asking for a user name. "To save this password, enter the username for your [website] account," reads the alert.

Details about the new feature were shared by Safari Apple employee Ricky Mondello, after they were asked about it on Twitter. According to Mondello, Apple made the change to "address a pain point" with the way that Safari and ‌iCloud‌ Keychain operate, and the update will indeed cut down on instances where a password is saved without a username.


iOS 15.4 also adds notes to ‌iCloud‌ Keychain and it lets you hide password update alerts, so there are quite a few useful updates in the betas. For a full rundown of everything in iOS 15.4, we have a dedicated features guide.

Tag: Safari
Related Forum: iOS 15

Top Rated Comments

contacos Avatar
17 months ago
How about the many times you take the suggested password but then you do not get the prompt to actually save it and you are left with a new account which password you don’t know? SO annoying
Score: 46 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Ash Pole Avatar
17 months ago
I dumped keychain for Bitwarden years ago.
Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dontwalkhand Avatar
17 months ago

Yep, this is the big pain point for me. It only saves when a new page is loaded (I assume with an HTTP 200 “OK” status required) in that tab after the password has been suggested, which doesn’t always happen depending on how the developer designed their signup flow.

If the form is submitted and a response received via JavaScript in that same tab, and there’s no way for you to visit a new page in that tab after your account is created/password changed, that password is likely lost. If you can find a link to click that opens in the same tab, your new password will be saved. Obnoxious.
That explains it. There needs to be a manual save button then when a password is automatically generated like this.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iLoveDeveloping Avatar
17 months ago
Ok. Am I the only one that doesn’t want this? Kinda like that it just saves everything. If I need to I can go back in and change it if needed. Sometimes I like just my password saved.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sgreen314 Avatar
17 months ago
How will this work when there is literally no username for a webpage? The way I'm reading it, please correct me if I'm wrong, it will demand a username. My 'Pi-hole' login literally only requests a password when logging in.

edit: Yes, a bit of an edge case.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AbSoluTc Avatar
17 months ago

I dumped keychain for Bitwarden years ago.
Congrats!

It's like when people talk about Windows PC's, there's always someone that chimes in with "I ditched Windows for Linux and my life is so much better" :P

Ok cool :)
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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