I’ve tried searching for this but apparently I’m using the wrong terms. I suspect it’s something really simple that I’m missing.
I’d like to be able to just hit a key or two and fill in my email address on any website form. I use Firefox on a WIndows10 machine if that makes a difference. Some sites that I visit appear to save it, but others require me to input it every time. Those are seconds wasted that I can use… um… elsewhere. Plus there’s always the fear that I’ll mis-type and not catch it before moving on.
If someone could give me a link to a site that tells how to do this, I would be most appreciative. Thanks!
That was already selected - apparently it doesn’t work for all websites. But from your link I did find out how to fix some of the saved info that had typos, so thanks!
I would use an app like AutoHotKey which lets you assign key combinations on your keyboard to pre-defined commands. You could set up CTRL+E to paste your email address. Here’s another random program to do the same which might be easier.
You can’t really rely on your browser to do it all the time because every web page’s form fields has a unique names. The browser is guessing with its built-in autofill feature when a field is your name, email, etc. I mean, there’s a lot of clues for the browser to get it right (if the field is named “email” or if the textbox is type “email” then it’s got a pretty good chance of being right) but you’ve already seen that the guessing can’t be 100%. And then there’s also times when it guesses wrong (such as when you’re filling out a form to send email to someone else and it puts in your email) and it takes more seconds.
If you’ve got a key combination that is a command that comes from you that you can put into any form field that you have identified as “email” it’s much more efficient.
To add a few more ways to do this to those already listed, I know that LastPass will autofill address data, so if your need is limited to email addresses, mailing addresses, and the other sorts of data LastPass will handle, and you also want a password manager, that’s an option. Other password managers may do the same. Like any context-based browser extension, it’s got to be able to figure out that a given box is meant to contain an address if it’s to suggest it for autofill. Otherwise, you’ve got manually select the thing you want to fill the box with. To me, it seems to do a good job of suggesting autofills but I’m not a heavy user of that feature, so I expect I’m more tolerant of its mistakes than you might be. Advantage: it’s not browser specific, so it should work as well for Chrome, Edge, etc. as Firefox.
Another somewhat esoteric option is a programmable keyboard. Features and number of programmable keys vary, but on those you can actually configure the keyboard itself to generate long strings of characters, e.g. an email address, in response to a single key press. This is great if you use dual-boot and want your keys to follow you across operating systems or if you use the same keyboard on multiple machines, but probably not the most useful option otherwise.