HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🥳

Happy belated New Year everyone (well, I guess it’s not belated if we’re using the lunar calendar). It has been quite a busy start to the new year for me, with lots of important developments. Let’s jump right in…

Official MV3 timeline

Google has published the latest Manifest V3 timeline, and it seems that June 2024 will be the final deadline. This means that Autofill will need to be updated to MV3 before June to remain in the Chrome Store.

Since MV3 extensions cannot evaluate JavaScript code strings, users who have built up a large collection of JS rules might be getting a little nervous. However, fear not, my friends — I have found a solution that will allow you to keep your JavaScript rules! See the next section for more details.

Automate → Autofill v12

Instead of starting from zero, I have decided to merge Automate into Autofill starting with the next major release, Autofill version 12. This release will have a bunch of exciting changes:

  • Update to Manifest V3 (MV3) for future-proofing
  • New MV3-compliant JavaScript rules (no need to recreate rules)
  • Rebranding from generic Autofill to Lightning Autofill
  • New simplified logo
  • New cloud sync to Google Sheets
  • Rename “Other Stuff” to “Settings” (finally)
  • No more banners! (see below)

New monetization strategy

As many of you know, I left my daytime job to focus on Autofill about one year ago. After considering many different types of monetization options, I settled on the Wikipedia model where Autofill shows a nag screen to encourage users to support the development of Autofill by subscribing. This was completely voluntary. After trying the nag screen for a year, I have come to realize that it isn’t working — the subscriptions barely pay for my rent, and I’m still eating into my savings account every month 😟. Starting with Autofill v12 (Lightning Autofill), I will implement a new three-tier monetization strategy as outlined below:

  • Free plan: up to 100 autofills a day (enough for most people)
  • Plus plan - $4.99/mo: unlimited autofills a day + cloud sync
  • Pro plan - $9.99/mo: unlimited autofills a day + cloud sync + JS rules

As promised, current subscribers will be grandfathered in as follows:

  • Monthly subscribers will be converted to the Pro plan at their current $4.99/mo rate (a 50% discount)
  • Yearly subscribers will be converted to the Free plan and emailed a 25% discount code off the Plus or Pro plan

After more than 12 years of giving Autofill away for free, I think finally charging for it is only fair. I’ve considered selling Autofill more than once over the years, but after reading about what happened to The Great Suspender, Hover Zoom, and many other extensions, I don’t think I would be able to sleep at night knowing there’s even a 1% chance that Autofill would one day be associated with malware.

I’m expecting this change will not be popular, and as a result, there will be a flood of negative reviews when v12 is published. If you do find Lightning Autofill useful, then I would greatly appreciate it if you spared a minute to leave a positive review to balance out all the negative reviews. THANK YOU 🙏