Domains: Disable autocorrect and spellchecker within input

[zaguiini]

Context and steps to reproduce

ScreenRecording_03-10-2025.18-35-39_1.MP4

Site owner impact

Fewer than 20% of the total website/platform users

Severity

Critical

What other impact(s) does this issue have?

No response

If a workaround is available, please outline it here.

No response

Platform

No response

[github-actions]

OpenAI suggested the following labels for this issue:

• [Feature Group] Emails & Domains: The issue is related to domain management, specifically disabling features that affect domain inputs.
• [Feature] Domain Management: This label applies because the issue directly impacts how domain inputs are handled on the site.
• [Feature] Email Integration: The issue may also affect email-related functions connected to the domains, necessitating consideration of how users interact with these inputs.

[Robertght]

I was able to replicate this but I got another string instead.

Leaving this as a high priority

[Robertght]

I'm flagging this to Groundskeeping for now.

cc @Automattic/quake in case this can be worked by your team.

[ramynasr]

Can I understand why exactly is that an issue? People are generally used to autocorrect when typing and they know how to revert the autocorrected word if they don't want the correction. Why do we need to handle this field differently?

[zaguiini]

@ramynasr my expectation, at least, is to not have autocorrect since it might lead to domain typos. When typing an address in Safari's input, it doesn't get autocorrected. Why should ours do it?

[p-jackson]

I think the important thing here is how do we want users to use this field? Do we expect them to type urls? Or do we actually think they should type keywords, and we're responsible for url-ifying it.

If we actually expect users to type a URL then a better option than disabling autocorrect might be to change to <input type="url">. That way we leave it to the user agent to decide the best way to type URLs.

Currently we use type="search", and I think that implies we think the user can type keywords if they want to.

FWIW, sample of 1, I find it super annoying not having autocorrect when using browsers on my phone. They think I want to type a url, but who does that 😅 url bars are for typing Google queries!

[zaguiini]

Yeah, that's true, @p-jackson; it is indeed a search bar, not a domain bar. So maybe it makes sense to keep autocorrect.

[ramynasr]

Yes, it is not intended for URLs as the Safari address input. In fact, data shows that our users type keywords much more than typing domains.
Taking that into account, i wouldn't see autocorrect as a bug here.

[zaguiini]

Let's close this then! Thanks for the input - pun intended.

[p-jackson]