Tuesday Quick Tip: Delete Autofills…
We’ve all done it: you visit your favorite site and misspell your login name. Uh-oh, now you are stuck with a misspelled autofill entry for the rest of your life, right? Wrong!
Who’s Teh Digitante? My evil twin brother perhaps? Hardly. He’s just a phantom that we can easily make go away with a couple of keystrokes:
- Type the first letter of the username so the autofill pops up, as above.
- Scroll down to the misspelled username.
- While it is highlighted, press the delete key. If that doesn’t happen to work, you can try holding the Ctrl key and pressing delete or holding the Shift key and pressing delete. The plain ol’ delete key seemed to work in all the situations I tried it in.
The entry should permanently be gone. This also works on any other autofill field such as if you move to a new address and you want to banish your old address. Or perhaps you are embarrassed that someone might see that you were searching for Britney Spears lyrics in the search box in the upper right corner of your browser.
Using someone else’s computer? Delete YOUR username from their computer when you are done logging in. Someone else using your computer. Delete THEIR username from your computer as well.
Is this the first time you’ve ever heard of this trick? Know of some other ways to go about this? Know of any way to edit existing autofill entries? Share in the comments!
3 Responses to “Tuesday Quick Tip: Delete Autofills…”
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Hi AHow this is Mike’s dad.
Can I program my password on one of the “F” keys on my Mac?
Jack, thanks for commenting. Let me do some checking and I’ll get back to you soon.
Alright, I found some information for you.
First of all, the password entry dialog is there to protect your computer. Not only could someone use your computer without your knowledge, but someone could take control through the internet, from thousands of miles away. Therefore you need to maintain strong passwords.
That being said, keeping track of your passwords doesn’t need to be a chore. My friend Eddie is a Mac user and recommended a program called 1Password. It not only remembers and fills in your passwords, but it also fills in forms for you as well, such as when you fill in your address when ordering online. It costs $39.95 and they have a 30-day free trial and a money-back guarantee, which makes it pretty much risk-free if you don’t like it. I use a Windows password manager called KeePass, but it isn’t available for Mac. With a program like this, you are still using a strong password, but it also makes remember and using your passwords easier.
Stuff like this is always a constant battle for me: I want to keep my information safe, but I also want it to be convenient and simple to use. Hopefully this will help relieve you of some of the password pains while still protecting your computer.
If you have other questions, feel free to contact me by heading to the About The Digitante page.