Writing on a mobile device, whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet, sucks. Because of the keyboard size and lack of physical feel, it’s just so easy to get it wrong. The situation gets worse when inputting passwords. By concealing input, one can’t check for typing errors.
I’ve long been a proponent of just showing the password field in plain text on mobile devices. There are multiple ways to go about it. You can have a toggle switch, a button that reveals the input for a limited time or possibly automatically show plain text after first unsuccessful login.
The obvious concern is that of security, but I don’t think this is an insecure way. It is much easier to conceal a display of a mobile device from prying eyes. Furthermore, this approach leads to a higher success rate so there’s no need to type a password multiple times which would present more opportunity to steal it (I’ve seen people who actually whisper their passwords when typing them).
So even though I think it’s good UX I unfortunately haven’t been able to convince anyone whom I’ve been building apps for to do this nor have I seen it in out in the wild. That is, until now.
I recently signed up for Mega. Their iOS client has this exact feature on the login screen:
I have to say the execution of it is not perfect (at first, I was confused with the actual meaning of the switch and since I didn’t write anything to the password field yet, it didn’t), but it could be easily enhanced. I would like to see more apps adopting this pattern for password input, making it more user-friendly, less error prone and also secure.
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