Xamarin Forms Password Entry on Windows Runtime

Xamarin Forms doesn’t have a specific PasswordBox control – instead you use the Entry (Think TextBox) and set IsPassword to true. Normally this works as expected and provides a masked entry box. However there is a known issue on Windows Runtime (Phone and Desktop) where AutoSuggest and Auto Capitalisation are not disabled for a Password field. Luckily there is a workaround which is to set the input keyboard to Email. The small side effect is the addition of a “.com” button to the keyboard but it will stop the control capitalising the first letter or showing suggestions based on what you are typing. I added the following code behind:-

if(Device.OS == TargetPlatform.Windows)
{
   txtPassword.Keyboard = Keyboard.Email;
}

This issue doesn’t affect Silverlight apps (TargetPlatform.WinPhone) and I decided not to set the keyboard on other platforms as they work correctly with the default keyboard.