Currently, when using the browser plugin to fill fields on a page, if the field is not visible, BitWarden won’t fill it in. This is done for two reasons
Part of auto-filling an identity form requires some rather liberal detection rules which could cause erroneous filling on forms that appear out of view. For this reason the current auto-filling features give context and priority only to the forms that are visible on screen.
To be a security feature since a malicious website could try to gather more information about you by hiding forms off screen that would then be filled by BitWarden
I encountered this where there was a page with custom fields, some of which were off the bottom of the portion of the page viewable in the viewport (such that you’d have to scroll down to reach them) and Control-Shift-L filling fields on the page only filled the fields that happened to be visible. I had to scroll down and fill them in a second time.
This is a feature request to add some kind of a checkbox and attribute to a credential so that the user can indicate that for a specific credential (which are used on sites with hidden fields or fields that are off the bottom of the viewport) the restriction of only filling in visible fields be disabled.
I think I understand the reluctance from the team to implement this liberally. What if it is only done if the field is explicitly named in the Custom Fields section, perhaps even with a checkbox to fill in this information even if the field is not visible.
My use case for this feature is a login screen, where 2 additional fields are revealed when you click on a Details button. One of these fields is the Role you will have within the application, which greatly changes how the application presents information.
You have resurfaced a post that is almost 4.5 years old, and which itself is based on a GitHub issue from 2017. The Bitwarden codebase has changed a lot since then.
FYI, current versions of Bitwarden does autofill form fields that are invisible (although it’s true that autofilling of identity data neglects visible input fields that are located outside the viewport boundaries — which is what OP’s feature request was about). The type of problem that you have described is usually caused by input fields that do not exist in the HTML code when the web page is first loaded, but that are subsequently injected dynamically into the web page (by a script that rewrites the HTML code being rendered). Sometimes (but not always), some work-around can be developed on a case-by-case basis, but this is highly dependent on the design of the login form.
Thus, if you are having trouble with a particular website, I suggest that you share the specific URL of the site in question, and request assistance in the Ask the Community Forum.