Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

Here's two autocomplete mistakes that really irritate me:

- Autocomplete on enter: Chrome does this, if I type in https://example.com (enter), it makes the mistake of autocompleting to https://example.com/some_page_I_visited_yesterday

- Arguing: Some applications that I use have autocomplete spell checkers that continue to aggressively try to "correct" technical terms, uncommon names, or company jargon that's not known. (For example, I'll cancel an autocomplete, then go back and add some punctuation, and it'll just "fix" the word again.)

- Autocomplete when the text field looses focus is a form of arguing.

- Learning typos, or incorrect learning: Libre Office started doing this. It learned some names, then it somehow learned a missed space after a common word and started continually trying to autocomplete "Electricvehicle" every time I put a space after the word "electric."

One thing that will help, in certain contexts, is the ability to unlearn or disable suggestions that frequently are canceled.

Unlearning is a great option. I have in Firefox a persistent autocompletion for a URL that I typo'd once, which still shows before the one I've been to a thousand times (because it's first alphabetically, I suppose?)

You can use Shift+Delete on an entry to remove it from the autocomplete list.

Not easily on a Mocbook Pro, which doesn't have a Delete key. Shift+Backspace doesn't work.

Really? I have a five-year-old MBP with a key labeled "Delete" (although it really seems to be "Backspace").

On MacBooks the combination of Fn+Backspace mimics Delete. So Shift+Fn+Backspace to remove a suggestion.

My biggest gripe with Firefox's history bar is that it's so slow to update that I'll go to click something, and then the whole list scrolls down or up and I now click something entirely different.

Even with search autocomplete disabled it takes forever just to search the history.

The first one is so god damn annoying. The tab is there for a reason if you really want the full autocomplete for crying out loud!

The second is very annoying and has even caused me to abandon the tool / software.

MacOS Mail has the worst autocomplete feature I've ever seen when it comes to the "To:" field. When I have to manually type a new e-mail address, it always selects some other e-mail address. I've just tried again: return validates the wrong address, tab does the same, clicking elsewhere does the same... A complete nightmare!

> Autocomplete on enter:

This irritates me as well and my brain now registered that to autocomplete on chrome I need to hit return/enter.

Issue is that on most forms where chrome suggests autocomplete based on what you fill other forms with, return/enter does not autocomplete and usually submits the form or goes to the next field..

Learning typos is terrible with Android autocorrect/swype on a Galaxy S8. Swype with autocorrect actually degraded over time, when I had an S1 it worked beautifully, and nowadays it frustrates me so much I end up typing words letter by letter.

They actually made the app worse. Progress?

Holding down on the word in the auto compete will allow you to delete it from your dictionary.

Thanks! Didn't know that.

Another annoyance that, while not the fault of autocomplete, still bothers me: I write in either Spanish or English, frequently changing between the two. It's hard to explain, but the UX of swiping right to change the keyboards generates too much friction on my brain when I'm tired (like when commuting back from work), so I end up using the Spanish default even when writing in English. Therefore, poor autocomplete is fast becoming bilingual. So when I want to write Spanish, it suggests me English words and viceversa.

I'm not blaming autocomplete here; it's clearly my usage pattern that's difficult. But at the same time, this is how I use my phone, so there's a problem to be solved here, and it doesn't involve me changing my habits :)

Every time I hit this problem I end up cursing and typing the word letter by letter, instead of changing the keyboard config. There's probably some valuable psychological insight there!

I'm exactly the same! It used to work first time, every time. Now I have to re-do every other word, so I just have to type it out. I know you can make it forget words, but it takes even longer.

> - Learning typos, or incorrect learning:

This is one that drives me crazy. Esp in the context of trying to be politically correct. No, Apple, I've never wanted to say "Duck" instead of "Fuck."

That first one annoys the hell out of me.

This is google favoring people who dont really understand the shared search address bar, and want _enter_ to "do something useful" vs returning an invalid page.

however, if i type out the full tld AND a slash, like google.com/ and click enter, DO NOT take me to a subpage unless i started typing another character.

short term workaround is to add periods to the end. google.com. it will strip the trailing period (even though it is more technically correct) and the period entry will get added to autocomplete suggestions.

The first also happens with ivy in Emacs, and makes it harder for me to create a new file from within Emacs in a directory with a different file with a similar name. Very infuriating.

I do a double space when I want to goto an exact match of what I typed.

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