How to Edit AutoFill Information in Safari for Mac OS X
Autofill is one of the more useful features of Safari that automatically fill online order forms and logins, whether it’s a name, shipping address, login and password, or even payment and credit card information.
Of course, if you change any of that information like an address or payment details, that old autofill information filling up forms in Safari is no longer accurate or relevant. In these situations, you’ll want to clear out the unnecessary autofill details from Safari to update to the proper address. Making these changes to Safari Autofill is really easy to do in Mac OS X.
This is the same on basically all somewhat modern versions of Safari in Mac OS X, with the only real difference being the inclusion of iCloud Keychain in more modern versions of the Mac browser.
How to Change, Edit, & Update All AutoFill Details in Safari for Mac OS X
- Open the Safari app as usual if you haven’t done so already, and choose the “Safari” menu and select “Preferences”
- Click the “Autofill” tab
- Choose “Edit” next to the type of web form autofill details you wish to change or update:
- Using info from my Contacts card – this is what will autofill your address, location, name, etc
- User names and passwords – this is what autofills logins to websites
- Credit cards – autofilled payment information
- Other forms – miscellaneous autofill information for other web forms are stored here
- When finished updating autofill information, click “Done” in the respect form update section and close out of Preferences for the change to take effect
This is also where you would go to remove stored logins in Safari that you no longer want maintained by autofill. Simply choose the “Remove” option to do that.
You can also turn off autofill for specific web forms in that same preference panel just by unchecking the appropriate box next to the form type. Additionally, if you happened to have forgotten a saved website login or password but have it stored in autofill, you can find that information in this panel too.
For those who use iCloud and iCloud Keychain, autofill details stored in Safari will carry over to your other Macs using the same Apple ID, as well as iOS devices using the same Apple ID and iCloud account – this is yet another reason why it’s important to maintain and use a single Apple ID for your devices. For this reason, you can also update or modify autofill information from iOS and have it carry over from, say, your iPhone or iPad, and have those changes carry over to your Mac with Safari in Mac OS too.
Note that changing your personal address information in Contacts also will carry over through iCloud to all of your iOS devices and Macs too. If you have multiple addresses just add them separately under an appropriate label (work address, home address, PO box, etc).
How do I edit my email address in my iMac autofill?
So im pretty familiar with all this and use this feature quite often and it works well. Though ive noticed when changing my home/shipping/whatever address (not email), it adds new addresses i add (i delete the previous address) but when i go to use the autofill feature when checking out shopping online anywhere, i notice that my old addresses still appear when using autofill during checkout but DO NOT appear in my contact autofill.
I was wondering maybe i should delete the “Other Forms” of autofill so maybe it gets rid of any other sites ive used old addresses but im afraid of deleting important info i may not have recorded elsewhere from “other forms.” Though i know most of my important stuff is recorded elsewhere there are little things i may not save that appear in that “other forms” section.
Let me know what you guys think or if anyone else has this issue.
My Safari autofill has started doing something peculiar. I put in a new data card for me, including “Mr.,” which is often required, and since then, the autofill will only fill in the first line in a form. I tried deleting the new card, but it still only fills in the first line. What do I do to get it back to filling in everything? Tx.
I went to the contact card and am unable to change the e-mail address that I want to remove because it is “grayed out” and won’t allow me to edit it.
When I use autofill it uses a Facebook e-mail address that I don’t use and it is a pain typing over it everytime I use autofill.
How do I remove the e-mail address in the contact card that is “grayed Out” please???
Thank you!!
For me, it’s more insidious. My old work email shows up every time I start to type my new email in spotlight and Safari, which includes all web forms- both iMac and iPhone. I hate the old company and I’m reminded of that douche bag every day when this error occurs. I purged my old email address out of everything I can think of….no change. Help.
This is hardly “really easy” as the article states. Really easy would be that Safari asked you if you wanted to replace the stored password with the one you just typed, if different.
That’s user-friendly, contextual functionality. I believe Firefox has done this for years.
Navigating through several menus and sub-menus and then searching manually for whatever form you want to update, is not really “really easy”.
Whenever I use AutoFill it fills in both my first and last name as if the two names were only my first name. I then have to erase my last name on the First Name line, and then manually type in my last name on the Last Name line. Tried editing the card, but AutoFill won’t allow me to make any changes. How do I get AutoFill to automatically fill in ONLY my first name on the designated line in a form, and only my last name on the corresponding line?
My bank acct keeps coming up with my email address as my user name and a password, all filled in automatically for me…but it is not right and I can’t gain access to my accounts. I have been thru passwords and autofill and removed the bank listings, but when I return to the bank site, it reverts back to the email for my user name. My edit instructions say to make the changes and then press “done”, but there is no “done” button. I have erase all entries and manually entered the info, but it won’t work….keeps reverting back to my email and bad password. This is sooooo frustrating!!
My contacts app is straight up gone? How do I reinstall or get this to work?
The problem I have, is that the list of autofill websites does not include the ones that Safari keeps autofilling that I want to delete.
For example, I read the Guardian newspaper daily (guardian.co.uk), but for some reason, when I start to type in ‘guard . . . ‘ a different address autofills for a junk newspaper called Guardian Liberty Voice – http://www.guardianlv.com
Neither the proper Guardian newspaper nor the junk newspaper appear in my ‘other forms’ autofill list, so I can’t delete it. Deleting my browsing history doesn’t work either.
It’s driving me nuts, and affects not just the above example, but other websites, too. It also affects every apple computer I used – imac, macbook air and ipad.
If you have any suggestions, I would be extremely grateful.
Um, this is not what autofill even does.
This URL autocomplete isn’t in the preferences menu at all.
Try going to Safari history, finding all instances of the offending site, and deleting them.
Also check you don’t have it bookmarked.
Yes, it’s f**ing annoying that the different autofill, autocomplete, autologin, that fill in bad information are all in different places.
No matter what I do Safari refuses to autofill. I’ve completed the the address book and the preferences but I get this message:
AutoFill completes webpage forms using information from your Address Book card or from web forms you completed previously. The information required by this form does not match any of the information available to AutoFill.
What’s blocking it?
barry, if you find out where the “other forms” data is please let me know. I have a SonicWall password in there I need to retrieve. Thanks.
in safari 5.1.10, choosing to Edit: Other Forms only gives you the option to remove ALL the form info on a webpage, not the ability to EDIT specific form values on a webpage.
where is the data stored on the hard drive such that i can go into a specific web page’s autofill data and edit specific info? in my case i want to remove or fix some typos that are stored on some forms.
os x 10.6.8
I live in an increasingly multilingual world and if Autofill knows well to fill in for Name, First name etc (My main Computer Language is English), it does not give me anything when I hope to fill in the same in French (Nom, Prénom), German (Vorname) or Italian (Cognome) …
Is there any suggestion?
Time for a class action against Apple AGAIN, the USER should be able to designate EASILY a default email address NOT have safari choose which one it wants to use based on which freaking device I’m on. I WANT TO USE ONLY MY BUSINESS EMAIL ADDRESS, NOT MY COLLEGE EMAIL, NOT MY STUPID .ME EMAIL, NOT MY DISUSED IDIOT HOTMAIL EMAIL, ***ONLY*** MY FREAKING BUSINESS EMAIL! APPLE MUST MAKE THIS HAPPEN NOW!!!!
It autofills using the first phone #, email, etc. Just reorder by copy/paste then delete.
Sorry, William B. This does not work. Autofill chose the wrong email address. I deleted it. I tried again thinking it would choose the email at the top of my list. Did not. It chose a rarely used email address near the bottom of my list. Try again.
I was having this problem with my email address in Autofill. I set my preferred email address to the first position of the data type and labeled it home but still the wrong address kept showing up in auto fills forms. So I DELETED the offending email address and PUT IT BACK IN AT THE BOTTOM, and then my email address at the first position worked!
Very Angry!!!
This doesn’t seem to change the one annoying thing Autofill does. I can’t get it to use my preferred iCloud e-mail address.
I unchecked all of the others but it still uses the unchecked one.
I use the autofill feature for accessing the wifi network at work. I have to change my password every few months but Safari just remembers the original password. I can’t seem to find a way to update to the new password. When the ‘login’ screen pops up, it doesn’t give me an option to remember the new password. Any ideas on how I could manually add a password to the autofill list?
I turned on the user names and passwords feature and received a warning about screen lock not being turned on. What is screen lock?
It is likely referencing the password that is set for your screen saver and when your Mac goes to sleep. If you don’t have one set you can use the guide here: https://osxdaily.com/2011/01/17/lock-screen-mac/