How to Delete Specific Chrome Autofill Suggestions
If use the Chrome web browser, it’s fairly likely you will find Chrome autofill suggestions recommending things for various forms and text entry points. Sometimes those autofill suggestions can be accurate, but sometimes they can be bizarrely irrelevant, unhelpful, or outdated. Most often these irrelevant Chrome suggestions show up from autofill in search boxes or text entry forms on various websites, and they can attempt to populate with random words, old search terms, and phrases that are less than useful or just not relevant to the current site.
Fortunately there’s a way to delete specific Chrome autofill suggestions from these sort text entry boxes, search forms, and various website menus. Because Chrome is available on virtually all mainstream computing platforms, you can use this trick to delete specific Chrome autofill suggestions in nearly any OS, including MacOS, Windows, Linux, and Chromebook too.
How to Remove Specific Chrome Autofill Suggestions
- Open the related website which has a form entry where autofill suggestions appear
- Start typing so that the suggestion shows up as an option in Chrome
- Using the keyboard arrows, navigate down the suggestion list to the item(s) you want to remove from the Chrome autofill suggestions
- With the suggestion highlighted, use the appropriate keystroke sequence to delete the Chrome suggestion:
- Mac: Shift + FN + Delete
- Windows: Shift + Delete
- Chromebook / Chrome OS: Alt + Shift + Delete
- Repeat with other suggestions to delete if desired
In the screenshot example here, a website search box is populating with an array of various autofill suggestions, none of which is even vaguely relevant to the website or the topics on that site, but appear to contain mixed keywords from web searches on other websites sometime in the distant past.
How to Edit & Modify Other Chrome Autofill Suggestions & Data
Separately, you can edit and modify general Chrome autofill details in Chrome settings as well. To do that, place the following URL into the Chrome URL bar and hit return:
chrome://settings/autofill
Then, click the little three-dots button next to autofilled addresses or phone numbers you wish to modify or delete, and choose “Edit” or “Remove” should do the trick.
In the general Chrome Autofill Settings page you can clear all autofill suggestions and toggle some of the specific parameters to better suit your needs.
How to Disable Autofill in Chrome Completely
You can also attempt to disable autofill in Chrome entirely by doing the following:
- In the URL / address bar of Chrome, enter the following link and then hit return:
chrome://settings/autofill - Toggle the autofill button OFF
Chrome should no longer use autofill, suggest autofill, or save to autofill.
It’s important to note the way the setting is worded implies this only pertains to disabling autofill in Chrome for addressees and phone numbers, but some users report it turns off all autofill functionality in Chrome. That may depend on which version of Chrome you are using.
This is obviously geared towards Chrome, but if you’re a Mac user with Safari then you can also edit and modify Safari Autofill data in Mac OS too.
If you find that Chrome is holding onto a lot of data that is no longer relevant to your particular web usage, you can also go all out and clear all Chrome caches, history, and web data, including autofill data from the web browser.
Do you know of any other helpful tips or tricks to clear out unwanted or irrelevant autofill data from your web browsers? Share with us in the comments below!
Thank you!!
Thank you so much for this answer. It took me forever to find this information.
Finally! YAY! Thank you
I’ve been lazily working on this for months and giving up when the top hits don’t work.
I was looking to get rid of outdated account numbers on one of my utilities bills. Three of the four in the drop down were wrong. The circuitous work-around was just painful!
Thanks! Worked like a charm (MacOSX)
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS! FINALLY I CAN CLEAR UP THE MESS THAT I HAVE
Thank you so much! Worked perfectly on Mac. Somehow it picked up an ex’s name so it’s very nice to be rid of it :)
This worked great but on a chrome book in stead of delete button which does not exist use the backspace key
it wont work for me
You wouldn’t know how many people have this MAC method wrong until you do a thorough search…
but finally – THIS METHOD WORKED!!! SUPER THANKS!!!
thank you! I was looking for the mac version!
THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH. I HAVE BEEN LOOKING EVERYWHERE ON HOW TO DO THIS!!!
Thank you so much! Shift-Delete to remove Autofill form data in Chrome is exactly what I was looking for. I tried clearing site data for the offending site, but that didn’t work. So glad that there was a simple fix!
Very simple and effective. Thanks!!
God damn, thanks a million. Been wasting hours looking for your solution.
How do you do it on Linux, e.g Ubuntu?
It works! thank you :)
Thanks so much – it has been bothering me for ages! Windows: Shift + Delete worked for me!
Thanks A Lot!
It worked. Thank you very much.
OMG, thank you so very much for taking the time to document this. You solved a huge PITA I was dealing with!!!
You might wanna update the tutorial and add something (because it didn’t solve my problem), the thing wasn’t getting deleted, and the reason was that it was actually in my bookmarks, so he would suggest it anyway. Deleting the bookmark solved it.
Excellent! Just the answer I’ve been looking for. Thank you!
Thanks a lot
Thank you!! This was driving me nuts for a few days.
Good to go, highlight + select + shift + delete
Thank you for solving my problem!
thanks u so much
thanksļ¼extremely useful
Thank you so much for posting this. I have been trying to find a solution for a couple of weeks and every site I came up with had instructions that were out of date. I was worried since yours was dated 2018, it also wouldn’t work – but it did!!
Thanks for your effort! I will purchase something from Amazon through your website in support.
Thanks a ton! Works like a charm š
Thank you so much! This has been driving me nuts. I am so happy to find a solution.
Many Many Thanks
Thank you! Worked seamlessly
Thanks! It’s worked
Thanks. So easy. Great tips
EPIC. Thanks so much for outlining this! No more searching for “focaccia” when i type “f” into my browser meaning to go to Facebook. LOL
I have not been able to do this successfully on either Mac or PC in Chrome and I have tried everything!
I have the same thing happen here–nothing helps! It’s on my work computer, too, so if anyone has quick suggestions as to why it might not work it would be so appreciated! Time is of the essence. Deleting my entire history, cookies, everything did nothing either.
I thought that it did not work at first but when I left the search and came back to it later the autofill suggestions were gone. it works but not in real time.
Omg, this is awesome. It’s working on my macbook. Thank you so much.
the same for me, cannot find how to delete the suggestion, nothing works.
further on Mac you don’t have a delete key, there is only backspace key.
please suggest a proper combination for Mac to delete the annoying suggested sites on Chrome.
Yes try fn+backspace
The backspace key is the same as the delete key on the Mac, though how it is labeled may be a matter of which country the Mac was purchased in. In the USA, the keyboard key is ‘delete’ whereas in EU it is often ‘backspace’
“Mac: Shift + FN + Delete”
This has no effect for me. Running latest version of macOS and latest version of Chrome. Any other methods available?
It’s been annoying me for months and you just made my day in seconds. Thank you.
Good Work
Thank you! this is the third blog visited to solve this. Turned out to be as easy as holding shift down. the previous 2 blogs however attacked me with annoying pop-up cookie/ad-block bs messages. And had explanations that were written in more than the size of a book page.
Works for me on windows 10 chrome Version 71.0.3578.98 (Official Build) (64-bit)
11th January 2019
Windows 10 needed the FN key also.
Shift + FN + Delete
Then it worked wonders. Thanks!!!
THANK YOU – YOU DESERVE COOKIES. (Windows user)
Looks like Shift + FN + Delete for Mac no longer works (after highlighting the entry I wanted to delete)
Is there a way to stop this entirely for a single website? Thanks
FN??? I don’t see FN anywhere on my keyboard : /
Every modern Mac keyboard has an ‘fn’ key, if you are using an Apple Extended II keyboard from 1987 then maybe you don’t have one, but anything somewhat new does. The ‘fn’ key is in the bottom left corner of the keyboard, next to control and under shift.
Jerry, it’s the function key. The function key is usually labeled as fn as fn stands shorthand for function.
Every Mac keyboard has a fn key.
Sometimes my auto suggested terms are very unrelated to what Iām doing. There is no rhyme or reason to it as far as I see. Thanks