March 10

5 comments

Check your Ninja Forms forms for browser autocomplete functionality

By Christopher G Mendla

March 10, 2018


Last Updated on September 22, 2023 by Christopher G Mendla

I was working on a landing page for this site. I noticed that the browser autocomplete functionality was not working for the Ninja Forms contact form. At first I thought it was a conflict with the landing page plugin. However, it appears to be an issue with settings in Ninja Forms. This can have a serious negative impact as far as visitor conversions.

I was filling out a simple Ninja Forms contact form on my WordPress site. It consists of name, email and message.  When I typed in chri for the beginning of my email, the browser autocomplete showed my email as I would expect. However, trying to select my email to autocomplete the form did not work. I tried this on another site that uses Ninja forms with the same result.

Having forms with the browser autocomplete off will almost certainly cost you conversions, especially with mobile users. 

I put a support ticket in at the Ninja forms site. (Free version). I also checked their github repo and found two prior issues, #231 and #2171. Both of these appeared to ask for the ability to turn the browser autocomplete off. I submitted #3428 requesting the ability to turn it on.   I noticed the same behavior when I submitted the trouble ticket on the Ninja Forms site. (Note the issues noted here now show a 404 as the folks at Ninja Forms have restructured their repository)

It doesn’t matter if you are using a Funnel or just a plain contact form on your site. Users will get annoyed when they have to type in their full email, especially when on mobile devices.

I’ll see what happens with the ticket but if the issue can’t be resolved, I’ll have to switch to another forms plugin at least until the issue is resolved. There is a possibility that there is an ability to turn browser autocomplete on but I could not find it anywhere.

Ninja Forms Autocomplete turned off
Ninja Forms Autocomplete turned off

Update Sept 2023

I am using Version 3.6.29 . The autocomplete seems to be working now. If you are using an older version of Ninja Forms, try updating to the latest version. Be sure to back up your site first.

Christopher G Mendla

About the author

A web developer living in Southampton, PA

Self motivated critical thinker and problem solver providing technology consulting services.

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  1. Pingback: A basic set or WordPress Plugins, mostly free. - Chris Mendla Tech
  2. HI Chris. Imagine me searching out an issue on Google and your post rises right to the top!

    I’m also having an issue where we have a second address field in Ninja Forms and Chrome keeps autofilling it wiht the primary address. Thus, the form is submitted with the address line twice. We can’t seem to turn this off in Ninja. Any suggestions?

    1. Randy – I switched to another form plugin for a while. I believe that Ninjaforms just published the fix that was supposed to support browser autofill.

      One thing I could suggest is to try renaming the address 2 field to something like Secondary or Secondary address. That MIGHT fool the browser enough to work around your problem.

      I would also pop a support question to the folks at Ninja forms. As a general rule, I look to see if the project is on Github. I believe that Ninja forms is. I seem to get better responses when raising an issue on Github than when using support for many apps.

  3. I just published a plugin to address this problem with Ninja Forms. It’s called UX Enhancements for Ninja Forms. My plugin inserts a small JavaScript file that basically notifies the web browser when you submit the form. Without this code the browser has no idea that you’ve submmitted anything, so the information is forgotten.

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/nf-ux-enhancements/

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}