There are a lot of things that we can do on the Internet and most of them these days involve filling in forms. It is common that when you want to register as a member of any website or forum, you are asked to provide some basic information about yourself such as first and last name, email address, gender, phone number and etc in the given registration form.
Even for things like downloading freeware you are sometimes required to fill in lengthy and quite personal details. Some online forms are not too annoying and only ask for a few items but others want to know almost everything about you. Whether you want to fill in a form with real or fake information, they are so common that it becomes a very tedious task. Filling in forms can be even more annoying than filling in CAPTCHAs.
Browsers like Chrome and Firefox do have some options to automatically fill in basic form data like name, address, email, phone number, and credit card, but they are a bit limiting. However, a browser extension can be far more advanced and save much more data for when forms require more than just standard information. Here we show you five browser extensions for filling in online forms with ease.
1. RoboForm
Most people will know RoboForm as a password manager like LastPass or BitWarden. What makes RoboForm extra useful is its powerful form filling feature which has fields for almost everything you can think of when filling in an online form. You can install the desktop application which offers a few extra features like auto fill without asking and a browser context menu but installing just the extension works fine.
You will first need to create a Roboform account from the extension with an email and password. If you want to also use the password management features or have sensitive information in the form filling data, choose a strong password. Form data can be added to Roboform in a couple of ways; by manually filling in an Identity or saving a completed form for a specific website.
Completing the required fields in an Identity will allow you to automatically fill a form for any website. Create a new Identity from the RoboForm Options menu, right click on the identity and select Edit. This opens a window with fields for dozens of form entries. There are tabs for Person, Business, Passport, Address, Credit Card, Bank Account, Car and a Custom tab to add fields manually.
Once you have filled in all the required fields, visit a website with a form, click the RoboForm icon and then on your Identity to fill it in. If there is a particular webpage that you want to save all the fields that you’ve entered, click on the RoboForm icon and click Save. The next time you visit the same page, the form will auto fill and submit. An entry appears above the Identities which can be edited, deleted and etc.
RoboForm has desktop applications for Windows and Mac OSX as well as mobile apps for iOS, and Android. There used to be a limitation of only 10 stored logins in the free version of RoboForm but these days it’s unlimited logins.
Download RoboForm for Chrome | RoboForm for Firefox
2. Autofill for Chrome by Fillr
Fillr says their extension is the most accurate and intelligent form filler in the world, which is quite a bold claim to make. As a standalone form filling extension, Autofill is easy to use and has a sizeable number of fields that can be filled in to make form filling more complete. However, there is only a single profile so you can’t create different profiles for different scenarios.
In addition to a standard Fill Form tab with name, address, email and mobile phone, there are other more detailed sections to fill in from the My Profile tab. They are; Personal Details, Contact Details, Addresses, Credit Cards, Identification, and Passwords. Even though there is only a single profile, you can set up and choose from multiple addresses, emails, phone numbers, credit cards, and passwords.
During first launch, the extension will require setting up a PIN which will be required whenever you want to access credit cards or passwords. The PIN option can be turned off if you don’t want it. To finish the install and get started, enter a name and email address. After adding data to all the required fields in Autofill, simply press “Fill the form” when you encounter a form that needs filling.
There is an option in the Setting menu (top right) to sync the extension data to Dropbox. One of the downsides of Autofill is you cannot manually add unknown fields or ask it to learn them. If specific fields or even the whole form is not recognized, you need to contact Fillr so they can add the data and fix the form to work in the future.
Download Autofill for Chrome by Fillr
3. Form Filler
Form Filler is designed with developers in mind so they can quickly test their own online forms. It can also be very useful for one time use forms that need to be filled in for things like downloading free software, ebooks, and etc. The idea behind Form Filler is to automatically fill all fields in a form with random or dummy data which will be good enough to bypass the form and continue.
Because you don’t have to enter any of your own credentials into the Form Filler extension, it’s ready to go as soon as it’s installed. All you have to do is visit an online form and click on the Form Filler toolbar icon. The fields in the form will immediately be filled with relevant but random data. Click the toolbar icon again to replace the current data with something else.
Despite the randomness of the entered data, some settings can be made more specific. For passwords, you can use a specific or a random string while emails can be set to a random or specific host (mailinator is the default) and user name. That’s helpful if you need to receive a verification email but still want fake data in the rest of the form.
There is a custom fields section in Options but editing will require a bit of knowledge on how forms work. CAPTCHAs and hidden fields can be ignored while agree or TOS boxes can be automatically checked. The context menu allows for filling a single field if you don’t want the whole form to be random data. Form Filler isn’t perfect and gets fields wrong occasionally, but it’s still very convenient for this kind of form filling.
Download Form Filler for Chrome | Form Filler for Firefox
4. Autofill
Autofill is an extension that has the ability to fill a form completely on page load without any interaction from the user. This is a useful function if you visit a number of regular sites and know what data needs to be entered into the form fields. While Autofill is quite powerful, a number of its options will require some experience to get the most out of it. However, less experienced users can also get it to do an effective job.
Autofill supports profiles and they can be used for different purposes such as for specific websites or only filling in certain parts of forms. By default, there are no pre-configured profiles and Autofill doesn’t come with a common list of fields waiting for the user to fill up. To get started, fill in an online form, click the Autofill icon, create a new profile from the drop down and then click the “Generate Autofill Rules” button.
You can leave it at that and the form will be filled when you visit the same webpage again, but it won’t work on other forms. To make sure the data can be used on other forms, go to the Autofill options and delete the text at the bottom of the page in the Site box. That removes the trigger for Autofill to only input the data at that specific URL. Once you fill in a few forms, Autofill should have enough field and input data to start working automatically.
The Exceptions tab allows you to exclude any web pages where you don’t want Autofill to automatically fill the form. There’s also a Text Clips tab which allows for entire blocks of text to be pasted onto the page and an Import/Export settings tab. Options like autofill delay, controlling sound effects, masking passwords and manual mode are in the Other Stuff tab.
Download Autofill for Chrome| Autofill for Firefox
5. Simple Form Fill
While Simple Form Fill might not be considered a proper autofill extension, it is very easy to use, which is why we think it’s worth mentioning. The idea is pretty simple, you add a selection of words, numbers or phrases into the extension that you think might be required by any forms you want to fill in. Then when you need to complete a form, simply select an input field, right click and choose something from the list.
As you are not limited by what kind of text can be entered, Simple Form Fill is quite useful for short forms and text boxes and can be used to complement other auto fill extensions. There’s also an autocomplete option where typing in a few letters will popup a selection box with matching entries from your list.
Adding to the items list can be done in a couple of ways. Firstly you can click on the extension’s icon in the toolbar and simply type what you want into the Items box. Alternatively, type something into a form currently being filled in, and if it isn’t in the list already, highlight it, right click and select Add from the context menu.
The autocomplete function is not enabled by default so if you want to use it, check the boxes in the options window. Upping the trigger characters to two or three will stop too many entries appearing at once if you have a sizeable list. This type of form filling obviously works in text boxes only and not drop down menus for country, dates, gender, and etc.
Download Simple Form Fill for Chrome | Simple Form Fill for Firefox
Auto Fill Forms Using Integrated Browser Options
The form filling abilities of browsers like Chrome and Firefox have improved over the years but they are still quite basic when compared to third party extensions. However, if your needs are fairly simple and you only require a few details like address, phone number, and email to be remembered, the integrated form filler may be all you need.
The Addresses and more window in Chrome has boxes for several pieces of data. There are options for Name, Organization, Street Address, Town/City, Country, Phone number, and Email. Other filling options like state/province and zip/postal code will appear depending on the selected country.
Firefox is also slowly implementing some basic auto fill options. The Autofill Addresses option is in Privacy and Security and is pretty similar to Chrome. The only real difference from Chrome is Firefox has three boxes for first, middle and last name instead of one box for full name.
