For many, one of the best things about our Android mobile is the dependence on our Google credentials. There are those who would not like to have to associate an email with the use of the telephone but, for many things, it is quite useful. Thanks to this, for example, we can store our information to autocomplete forms with great ease.
As in iOS you can do it with iCloud, in Android you can use your Google account to register in many services and here our mobile has an auto-complete function activated by default that saves, not only the login and passwords in the Google account, but also other texts such as addresses or words from the dictionary.
With the different versions of Android that have been coming to our phones over the years, this autofill function has spread through Chrome, the system settings and even with other Android applications. For example, you can store the access passwords to your applications, or the shipping address when you buy online by letting Google automatically complete this data on any Android device in which you have logged in.
Advantages and disadvantages of autocomplete texts on Android
In favor
The great advantage of this system is that of being able to “forget” about the passwords that you have saved on your mobile. Nowadays it is highly recommended not to repeat the same credentials in different services and remembering dozens of passwords could be quite complicated unless you use the autocomplete function of Android. Also if you change the password, the service itself will tell you if you want to change it in Google’s storage.
The same applies to texts, such as full name and addresses that are required of us every time we have to fill out a form with our mobile. Thanks to the Android tool we don’t have to go around always entering the same thing over and over again.
Against
On the negative side we have some doubts about the security of this system since, for example, it lacks two-factor authentication systems, The latest versions of Android are much more secure than the first and you should not have problems with the management of passwords in the mobile or with other stored data.
How to enable Google AutoComplete on mobile
To enable this useful option on your Android mobile you must open the Settings panel and look for the System options. There locate Language and text input and, at the bottom (or in the advanced settings section) you will find the Autocomplete tool. The most logical thing is that the mobile itself gives you the option to Autocomplete with Google.
What texts can you store on your mobile?
As you can see on the upper screen, Android gives you the opportunity to save up to 4 different data:
- Personal information : In this section you can manage your name and surname, gender, date of birth, email (whatever you want) and phone number.
- Addresses : When you buy an item and are you tired of always having to enter the address by hand? With this tool you can set different directions for the mobile to do it for you.
- Payment methods : With the arrival of Google Pay, the possibility of saving your payment details, whether they are cards or PayPal accounts, was added to your mobile account so as not to have to enter them repeatedly. Probably, this is one of the options that we do not recommend using with the autocomplete function.
- Passwords : Without a doubt, the favorite tool of the mobile. All the credentials and passwords of the platforms on which you have logged in are stored here, not only with your mobile, but with your Google account. Here you will also find a function to review them and their security.
How login credentials are saved and used
When you open an app and log in when prompted for the first time, Android will offer you the ability to save your login credentials. They are saved in the Google account you are currently connected to on your Android device.
For this reason, all you need to do, either when working with the browser or with different apps, is to make sure that you have logged into the Google account in which you have saved the logins on the Android device so that, when you open an application, your email address appears as a suggested option below the corresponding field. The same will happen with passwords.
How to see all my passwords saved on my mobile
To see Google’s autocomplete for app passwords, you will need to visit this link and log in with your Google account. You will arrive at the same place as in the previous step and you will be able to manage, either by changing, deleting or adding, the login credentials.
