Intent to Ship: Respect autocorrect="off" for Windows touch keyboard in TSF

[Chromestatus]

Contact emails

prana...@microsoft.com

Specification

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interaction.html#autocorrection

Summary

The HTML autocorrect attribute allows web authors to control whether autocorrection should be applied to user input in editable elements including <input>, <textarea>, and contenteditable hosts. On Windows, the touch keyboard ignores this attribute and always autocorrects words. For example, typing "truf" followed by space in an element with autocorrect="off" yields "true " instead of preserving "truf ". This feature makes Chrome's TSF integration detect and revert touch keyboard autocorrections when the focused editable element has autocorrect="off" set.

Blink component

Blink>Editing>IME

Web Feature ID

autocorrect

Motivation

The autocorrect attribute is defined in the HTML Living Standard and applies to both form controls (<input>, <textarea>) and editing hosts (elements with contenteditable). On Android, Chrome correctly communicates this preference to the soft keyboard via EditorInfo.inputType flags. On Windows, however, TSF's InputScope interface has no autocorrect field, so the touch keyboard is unaware of the page's preference and always autocorrects. This creates a broken experience for web apps that explicitly disable autocorrection such as code editors, username/email fields, medical or legal forms, and any scenario where precise user input must be preserved. This feature fixes the gap by having Chrome detect and revert touch keyboard autocorrections at the TSF layer when autocorrect="off" is set on the focused editable element. Moreover, Autocorrect is performed only by the touch keyboard's prediction engine. Physical keyboards and traditional IMEs go through composition ranges and are unaffected. Firefox also does not honor autocorrect="off" on the Windows touch keyboard, verified that it autocorrects every time. For non-touch (physical keyboard), neither browser has autocorrected behavior.

Initial public proposal

No information provided

TAG review

Not Applicable

TAG review status

Not applicable

Goals for experimentation

None

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

No information provided

Gecko: No signal (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Global_attributes/autocorrect)

WebKit: No signal (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289197)

Web developers: No signals

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

No. This change is Windows-only. It has no impact on Android, Android WebView, or any non-Windows platform. A kill switch (kTSFHonorAutocorrectOff) is in place regardless.

Debuggability

No DevTools changes needed. This feature operates entirely at the OS input layer (TSF) and does not introduce new web-facing APIs, events, or state.

Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, and Android WebView)?

No
Already supported on Android. This change specifically adds support for windows TKB.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

Yes
Adding WPT not feasible for this change. Unit tests have been added for automated testing for the feature. A manual WPT has been created for the change. Link - https://wpt.live/html/editing/editing-0/autocorrection/autocorrect-off-touch-keyboard-manual.html

Flag name on about://flags

Not Applicable

Finch feature name

kTSFHonorAutocorrectOff

Rollout plan

Will ship enabled for all users

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/487613498

Estimated milestones

Shipping on desktop

148

Anticipated spec changes

Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of the API in a non-backward-compatible way).

No

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5196629995028480?gate=6520647549321216

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.