Enable Require Authentication for Password Autofill in Microsoft Edge

Soon it will be possible to enable the require authentication for password autofill option in Microsoft Edge. Microsoft is securing the password autofill feature in the Edge browser. Microsoft Edge Canary now includes an option to require passwords before it auto-fills passwords. It adds an additional security level and may protect you from people who managed to access your PC and the browser.

When you visit a website that requires you to sign in with a user name, email and password, the Microsoft Edge will display a prompt to remember your user name and password. The next time you open this website, the browser will auto-fill in your credentials. This feature is enabled by default, but can be disabled at any time.

The updated Autofill option can be useful when someone managed to access your PC while it remained unlocked and tried to use your Edge browser. That person could access any website for which Edge has password saved, including banking, social networks, and so on.

The new feature was planned for a while. Microsoft describes it as follows.

With this capability, passwords saved to the browser will no longer be autofilled. They will need a successful user authentication prior to filling. This will add another layer of privacy and help prevent non-authorized users from using saved passwords to log into websites.

Finally the change is live in Canary builds of Edge. As of now, it is under a controlled feature roll-out. This means that not every Canary build user will be able to access it.

This post will show you how to enable the Require Authentication for Password Autofill option in the Edge browser.

How to Enable Require Authentication for Password Autofill in Microsoft Edge

1. Open Microsoft Edge.
2. Click on the menu button (Alt + F) and select Settings from the menu.
3. On the left, click on Profiles.
4. Click on Passwords in the right pane.
5. On the next page, select Require Authentification for the Sign-in option.
6. In the drop-down menu, select either Always, Once every minute, or Once every session for what fits your needs.

You are done. The browser will now show a password prompt before it automatically fills the login data for websites with saved passwords.

That's definitely a great improvement that will be welcome by many users who work in teams and share their workspace with other people.

The feature remains configurable, so if you find no use for this extra security confirmation, you can quickly disable it by choosing Sign me in automatically in the browser's settings as shown in the screenshots above.

Thanks to Leo for this tip.

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