Option to disable rich autocompletion

[markg85]

Description

Option to disable rich autocompletion

Who's implementing?

• I'm willing to implement this feature myself

The problem

Chrome by default has "rich autocompletion" when you type in the URL bar (known as omnibox).

Unfortunately the design of this feature - when rich autocompletion is triggered - makes it so that you can't modify the url anymore.

It's difficult to explain if you haven't seen it before, hopefully an image helps?

In my opinion the url bar must be editable. This feature introduces - while better autocomplete results - a much more difficult way to edit that url bar. It amazes me that Google even comes up with this crap and stays with it. Surely this is annoying at best and frustrating at worst.

Possible solutions

This issue is reported upstream but Google doesn't seem eager to put time in it to fix it.
The issue: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1394443 it also has the patches in there that enable "rich autocompletion" to be toggled in the flags. But that option was release-limited and doesn't seem to be updated anymore. Hence it's in chrome now and can't be turned off anymore.

Alternatives

None

Additional context

The upstream issue, while close to dead, does seem like it's still being worked on.
Still, it would be cool if ungoogled-chromium could pick up this patch for those that like to have rich autocomplete disabled (and hence have a working url bar again).

[PF4Public]

How does one trigger it?

[PF4Public]

Still nothing:

[markg85]

It's not straightforward to trigger giving it the feeling of a buggy feature... Apparently even that isn't an argument for google to disable by default till they flesh it out.

So here's how i reproduced it:

1. Google for "George Washington wiki" and open the link
2. close chrome
3. open chrome, type "george washington", use your arrow keys to open the wiki page
4. close chrome
5. open chrome, type "george washington", use your arrow keys to open the wiki page (yes, this step twice)
6. close chrome
7. open chrome, type "george washington". Now the rich autocomplete kicks in. While you type the name "george" it will already have highlighted that result in a non-editable way.

I guess that you have to visit a site a couple times before the rich autocomplete considers the site's title for autocomplete results.

If you still can't reproduce it, try on a clean slate chrome with the exact steps as described above. If that still doesn't work then i can make a screen recording for it... but i think the above should suffice.

[michael-wise]

Nicely said. The big issue with this is that the bug activates for sites that you visit a lot, which uncoincidentally, are the sites you may find yourself editing the url for.