Checking Mask Field Value helpfully changes the visible field contents to a row of dots, which can be revealed by either clicking the check box by the field (default layout) or clicking in the field (multi-column layout).
If you scroll over the dots and copy, what you get on the clipboard is dots. If you paste that into a field, you get dots again. So copying a value from a password field to another password field will give you dots, not the password, unless you revealed the contents first.
This behaviour is different from (e.g.) that of a password manager like 1Password. There, you can’t select the dots but there is a copy button. Pasting that somewhere gives you the actual password. Expecting such behaviour in TF could be dangerous, making it easy to lose field contents.
Imagine the scenario: You go to the field, expecting to copy the password when you select the row of dots. You hit Command-X instead of Command-C. The dots disappear! But you think you’ve just copied them, so you Command-V back into the field. Unfortunately, all you have now in the field is a row of dots.
I may be paranoid, but losing passwords is not nice. I wonder whether an extra layer of protection might be beneficial for a careless user. Setting up a financial file, I just deleted a bank password this way. Fortunately I’ve got it elsewhere, but I was surprised by how easy it was to lose – that’s the motivation for this post.
Hi Martin,
I’ll look into preventing you from copying or pasting the dots until you reveal the contents of the field. That should probably solve the problem.
Thanks for reporting this issue.
Brendan
Actually, I’ve made it so that on the multi-column list view, if you copy a masked value, Tap Forms will copy the underlying value instead of the dots. I think that’s much better.
.
