Why doesn't standard Chrome text input autocomplete work in Salesforce Lightning?

Question

When in Lightning why doesn't the standard text input field provide autocomplete like it does when in Classic?

i.e. I have a text field in a custom object, I go to create a new record and the browser does not remember any of the previous values I entered into that text box. But it does when using Classic.

Note: I'm using Google Chrome.

Answer 1

Autocomplete only works when a form is submitted. Because Lightning does not use a form tag, and it never submits forms to the server (it's all AJAX-y REST API calls), browsers are convinced that there's nothing to save in the autocomplete cache.

If you really want to, though, you could choose to put a form in your application or component, submit it, and it will cause the browser to remember the values.

A simple application demonstrates this:

<aura:application extends="force:slds">
    <form aura:id="form" target="iframe" action="#" onkeypress="{!c.blockEnter}">
        <lightning:input type="text" label="Name" name="name" />
        <lightning:button label="Add to Autocomplete" iconName="utility:save" onclick="{!c.saveAutoComplete}" />
    </form>
    <iframe id="iframe" name="iframe" class="slds-hidden" />
</aura:application>

---

({
    blockEnter: function(component, event, helper) {
        if(event.which === 13) {
            event.preventDefault();
        }
    },
    saveAutoComplete: function(component, event, helper) {
        component.find("form").getElement().submit();
    }
})

When you enter a value, then click the button, your browser will remember the stored value. Please feel free to customize this behavior as you like.