Secure Text Entry locked

[hobbes444 0]

Since upgrading to Sierra, Alfred always shows (under snippets) the following red message: "loginwindow seems to be preventing text expansion by locking secure entry".

 

Text expansion does not work. Not only for Alfred, but for every text expansion programme. Even the macOS own text snippets (keyboard system pref) does not work.

 

Now, I thought it was Chrome due to issue 258882. But quitting Chrome doesn't fix it. Rebooting the computer does of course, but I was not able to find another solution so far.

 

Any suggestions?

[deanishe 995]

Not much you can do apart from avoid the application causing the issue and notify the developers whose bug is causing the problem. 

 

Rebooting is the only way to get snippets to work again, AFAIK. If an app forgets to disable secure entry, you've generally had it.

[hobbes444 0]

I am still at step “find the culprit” right now. Are you saying it could still be Chrome? Quitting the app will not disable secure entry?

[deanishe 995]

If you open Alfred Preferences > Features > Snippets, it says in red text which application has enabled secure input.

 

 

No idea if it's Chrome. I stopped using it in favour of Safari quite a long time ago (the secure input bug being one of the reasons).

 

Certainly, when Chrome forgot to disable secure input, quitting the application often didn't help. Quitting iTerm does disable secure input, but I have no idea if that's the app tidying up after itself or if the secure input API has been updated to handle that.

 

Edited December 3, 2016 by deanishe

[hobbes444 0]

I have the same message but with "loginwindow" being the culprit. No idea what that is. Is it possible it is still Chrome? 

[deanishe 995]

loginwindow means the OS itself when you logged in. TextExpander also shows loginwindow when it can't tell which app did it (loginwindow is the parent process).

 

The TextExpander FAQ might help. I think much of it will apply to any snippet expander:

 

https://smilesoftware.com/textexpander/secureinput

[scotteg 0]

I recently switched to Alfred after using TextExpander for over 10 years (since it was Textpander and free), including using TextExpander with macOS Sierra. There were literally only a handful of times that it stopped working. So, I believe this may be an issue with Alfred, not macOS, or more specifically, how Alfred is interacting with macOS. In Alfred, this happens every morning. I leave my computer running at the end of each day but put it to sleep, and when I wake it up each morning, I encounter this problem. My Mac does go to sleep during the day at times, but I don't encounter the problem when I wake it up throughout the day. Only each morning.

 

Btw, logging out and back in fixes the issue for me.

Edited December 7, 2016 by scotteg

[deanishe 995]

8 minutes ago, scotteg said:

So, I believe this may be an issue with Alfred, not macOS, or more specifically, how Alfred is interacting with macOS.

 

That's extremely unlikely. Alfred isn't altering (i.e. screwing up) your secure input settings, some other software is.

 

Install TextExpander (or Typinator) and it will tell you exactly the same thing every morning.

[scotteg 0]

31 minutes ago, deanishe said:

 

That's extremely unlikely. Alfred isn't altering (i.e. screwing up) your secure input settings, some other software is.

 

Install TextExpander (or Typinator) and it will tell you exactly the same thing every morning.

 

As unlikely as it may seem, I did have TextExpander installed on this Mac (it's a brand new MacBook Pro), same version of macOS, and this issue was not occurring with TextExpander.

[deanishe 995]

If Alfred is telling you that secure input is enabled (see screenshot above), it's very unlikely that Alfred is causing the issue, even if TextExpander worked last week.

 

Can you re-install TE (or some other snippet expander) and check if that still works when Alfred isn't?

[abe 0]

happened on mine. Confirm Chrome is the culprit. Quit Chrome, "loginwindow seems to be preventing text expansion by locking secure entry" gone

[mikedvzo 8]

I have had this issue too and if I quit all apps it goes away.  Still yet to figure out the culprit.  

Edited May 22, 2018 by mikedvzo

[illyay 0]

same here... this is happening to me ALL the time and the only way to fix seems to be to restart my mac! wonder if it has to do with OneLogin... 

[noNameHere 0]

same here . I have to reboot my mac

[deanishe 995]

2 hours ago, noNameHere said:

I have to reboot my mac

 

Sometimes, logging out and logging back in works.