One-time codes

Typing a verification code normally means pulling down the shade, reading six digits, going back to the app and hoping you remembered them. WM Keyboard can skip that: when a code arrives in a notification, a chip appears above the keys with the code and the name of the app that sent it, and one tap types it.

This is off by default and it needs notification access, which is a broad grant. The rest of this page is what the keyboard does with it, and what it deliberately doesn’t.

Screenshot pending

A code chip above the keys: the code, the app that sent it, and an ✕ to dismiss.

Turning it on

WM Keyboard›Typing›One-time codes›Codes from notifications

Turn the switch on. A plain-language disclosure explains what the feature reads and why. The system’s notification-listener screen opens next, where you grant the access. If you back out without granting it, an Allow notification access row appears under the switch as the way back. That row disappears once access is there.

The grant is the same notification-listener permission the media control tool uses, but the two features are asked for separately, because they read very different things. Media control reads no notification content at all; the code chip reads notification text to find a code. Granting one doesn’t turn the other on.

Turning Codes from notifications off stops the keyboard reading notifications immediately, and drops any code it was holding at the same time.

What gets read, and what’s kept

While the feature is on, the keyboard looks at each incoming notification’s text: title, body, big text, inbox lines, sub-text and summary, up to the first 1,000 characters. It skips its own notifications, anything ongoing (a media session, a download, a foreground service) and group summaries, since none of those carry codes and the summary would only raise the same code twice.

If a code is found, it goes into a single in-memory slot: the code, the posting app’s name, the notification’s key, and a capped copy of the message for context. Nothing is written to disk, nothing is sent anywhere, and a newer code replaces an older one rather than queueing behind it. Two codes in flight means the first one was abandoned, and offering a stale code is worse than offering none.

What counts as a code

The detector is deliberately hard to trigger. There is no “any six digits” rule, because delivery slots, order numbers and flight times all arrive as notifications too. Every pattern is anchored to a word that promises a code is next: otp, passcode, verification, code, pin on their own, and verification code, security code, login code, sign-in code, 2fa code and similar pairings.

Four anchored shapes run in precision order, so a message with several numbers gives up the right one:

• 482913 is your Amazon OTP
• Your OTP is 482913, code: 482913, PIN - 4829
• OTP for account 2310990533 is 4279, where the code follows the “is” rather than the account number
• use 482913 to sign in, enter 4829 to verify

If none of those bites, the clipboard detector’s keyword-proximity pass runs as a recall net, which is also what catches alphanumeric codes like WX8Q2P.

A few guards apply throughout. A code has to be 4 to 8 characters. A bare four-digit value between 1900 and 2099 is rejected, because that’s a year to a person and a code to a regex. Google’s G- prefix is stripped as branding rather than treated as part of the code. And a deny list on the keyword itself stops “zip code 90210” and friends from ever qualifying.

The chip

The chip is drawn with a dashed outline, the same visual language the clipboard fragment chips use: this is something lifted out of somewhere else, not text you typed. It shows a small Code badge, the code itself, and the posting app’s name, so you can see whose code you’re about to trust before you trust it. The ✕ on the right dismisses it, which drops the code everywhere rather than just hiding the chip.

It ranks high in the strip, above the clipboard and snippet chips, because the code is usually the whole reason you’re in that field and it expires while everything else can wait. Only the password-manager lane beats it, since the platform may be offering the same code with more context.

The chip hides itself, without dropping the code, when the current field doesn’t qualify. One case does that: Only in code boxes is on and this field doesn’t read as one. Incognito mode doesn’t hide it: reading a code out of a notification records nothing, and a login in a private tab is where the code is wanted. It hides rather than drops, because you’re often one tap away from the box the code belongs in.

A field counts as a code box when it asks for a number keypad, or when the app named it one — the hint it shows while empty, its accessibility label or its resource id saying OTP, PIN, passcode or verification code. The names that only look like codes don’t count: a ZIP code, a country code, a promo code and a coupon code are all left alone.

Typing into a row of boxes

Plenty of apps and websites split a code across a row of single-character boxes that advance the focus for you. A code committed whole lands entirely in the first of them, which keeps one character and drops the rest.

Type codes one character at a time (on by default) handles that. The keyboard sends one character every 40 ms or so, and re-reads the input connection between each one, because the focus moving to the next box is exactly what replaces it. In an ordinary single field the result is identical, just spread over a few frames.

This setting sits outside the rest of the group on purpose. It governs every path that types a code, including a code tapped from a clipboard chip, which needs no notification access at all.

Options

WM Keyboard›Typing›One-time codes

Setting	Default	Shown when
Codes from notifications	Off	always
Allow notification access	Action row	Codes from notifications on, and access not granted yet
Only in code boxes	Off	Codes from notifications on
Offer a code for	3 min (range 1–10 min)	Codes from notifications on
Clear the notification	Off	Codes from notifications on
Type codes one character at a time	On	always

Only in code boxes narrows the chip to the fields described above. It’s off by default because some apps give their code box neither a number keypad nor a telling name, and there is no way to recognise those — a code that never appears where you need it is worse than one offered in a field you weren’t going to use it in. Turn it on if you’d rather never see a code offered mid-sentence.

Offer a code for is measured from when the notification was posted, not from when you saw it. Past that, the code is dropped rather than hidden.

Clear the notification dismisses the code’s notification once the chip has typed it, using the same access the capture does. A few apps re-post their code after a dismissal, which is the reason it’s off by default.

Details & edge cases

• The code never leaves the device and is never stored. It lives in memory until it’s used, dismissed, replaced by a newer code, or ages out. There’s no history of past codes anywhere in the app.
• An app updating the same notification doesn’t re-raise a dismissed chip. Recently processed notifications are remembered by key and post time, so progress ticks and group re-sorts don’t bring back a chip you just closed.
• The clipboard has its own, separate code path. Copying a verification text offers a Code chip too, covered under Smart chips. It needs no notification access, and it has its own setting under the Clipboard tool. Pasting a whole clip that is nothing but a code goes in character by character as well, on the same reasoning.
• Turning the feature off is immediate, not on next launch. The flag the notification listener reads is flipped at the same moment as the setting, and any captured code is dropped with it.
• Nothing runs before your first unlock. Between a restart and the first time you enter your device credential, the feature behaves as off whatever the switch says. The lock screen still redacts notification content at that point, and a chip printing a code out of one would put exactly that on the keyboard.