How to Use AutoFill in the Safari Browser

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Updated January 22, 2020

Entering information into web forms can be a tedious exercise, especially if you do much online shopping. It is even more frustrating when you find yourself typing the same information over and over again, such as your address and credit card details. Safari provides an AutoFill feature that stores this data on your device and populates it whenever the browser detects a form.

Information in this article applies to Macs with macOS Catalina (10.15) through OS X Yosemite (10.10).

How to Use AutoFill in Safari

AutoFill information is potentially sensitive, so it is important that you understand how to manage it. You can turn on specific types of information to be used in AutoFill or turn off all the options completely. Safari provides an easy-to-use interface to manage your AutoFill information.

Open Safari and select Preferences under Safari on the menu bar.

The keyboard shortcut for opening Safari preferences is Command + , (comma).
Select the AutoFill tab at the top of the General preferences screen.
Place a check next to any of the four AutoFill options you want to use when auto-filling forms on the internet.

To prevent Safari from using any of these four categories to auto-populate a web form, click the corresponding check mark to remove it.
To view or modify the saved information used by AutoFill in a particular category, select the Edit button to the right of its name. When you do, you are prompted to enter your user password. This protects the information in AutoFill from prying eyes.

The four types of information are:

Using information from my contacts: Completes forms with the information from a contact card in the Contacts app.
User names and passwords: Safely saves the passwords and usernames you enter on web pages and uses them again when you revisit the same web pages.
Credit cards: Safely saves your credit card number, name, and expiration date and uses the information when you use the card again. You can add new credit cards, remove old ones, and edit your card information here.
Other forms: Save other information you enter on web pages to fill it in when you revisit the save webpages. Click Edit to see what is saved or to edit it.

You can choose to edit or remove AutoFill entries on a site-by-site basis at any time.

If you have Touch ID on your Mac, you can use it to fill in AutoFill names, passwords, and credit card information that it selects from the Safari preferences AutoFill tab.