1854284 - Consider/investigate prioritizing domains above subdomains for URL bar autofill

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Will]

Attachment: firefoxMautocomplete.png

Similar to issue 1610718 (please read through if you can. Marco suggested I open this bug in comment 32), please consider/investigate prioritizing domains above subdomains for Firefox's URL bar autofill (beyond the obvious ones like 'www' or 'm.'). Example: when I type "m", "mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox" autofills. For me, that is not what I want or expect and doesn't seem as logical or 'right'. I want URL's such as max.com to autofill when I type "m". Another example: when I type "e", "en.wikipedia.org/" autofills. I want ebay.com to autofill, not en.wikipedia.org.

Comment 1

[Will]

Attachment: FfsubdomainAutofill.png

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

I think the localized case is an obvious one where we can do better. en.wikipedia.org is a clear example indeed.

Other cases like "mail." require a bit more attention cause there's risk of breaking users who got used to type m to exactly go to "mail"... we should improve the autofill adaptive system for those cases I think.

Comment 3

[Will]

Attachment: firefoxautofillapple.png

Another weird example of this issue: I'm intending to get apple.com to autofill, but when I type "ap" it's autofilling "https://apps.apple.com/", which doesn't make sense because I go to apple.com pretty frequently. It's almost like subdomains are weighted more to have a higher priority than domains in Firefox's autofill? If that's the case, that doesn't seem right. At the very least they should be equal (though I think domains should be prioritized above subdomains for autofill)

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

it's purely based on recent visits, if it fills apps before, it's because it can find more recent visits to that domain. There's no higher priority or anything else involved.
We have ideas to improve the system that will likely be investigated in H2 2025.

Comment 5

[Will]

Marco you're the best, thank you!

Also a few months back I remember someone on reddit complaining about this issue for Spotify. Spotify is https://open.spotify.com/ but when you type "spotify" it doesn't autofill.

Comment 6

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Will from comment #5)

Also a few months back I remember someone on reddit complaining about this issue for Spotify. Spotify is https://open.spotify.com/ but when you type "spotify" it doesn't autofill.

Yeah, unfortunately that's an issue due to the way we autofill. We require the domain to start with the user typed word. I know that other browsers do it differently, inserting text before what the user has typed. But that can be confusing as it's not a very common behavior of input fields, and it causes all the text to shift around. We'll evaluate solutions to that, but there's nothing in sight for the short term for that specific behavior.

Comment 7

[Will]

Yes it's all a bit of a mess. I wish companies like Spotify knew better, "https://open.spotify.com/" is poor from a UX perspective (doesn't autofill when user types "s") and bad for their business too. It's unfair that Firefox devs like yourself are having to think of ways to "fix" other peoples poor decisions. Papercuts like this is are a big part of the reason why people tend to use apps instead of web browsers, which is a real shame.