char

Most fields in Odoo are text, and most of them are rendered by this widget without anyone naming it. It draws a single line input, writes the value on change, and handles the trimming and the length limit the field declares.

Its second job is less visible and more important: it is the base that specialized text widgets extend. The emoji field, the copy-to-clipboard variants, the survey title cell, the HSN lookup and several others all spread this descriptor, which means whatever this widget extracts is what they inherit.

That inheritance is where the surprises live. Several of those widgets replace the extractor entirely and silently lose everything listed on this page, which is why knowing the base's real option set is worth more than it first appears.

There is no configuration decision to make about the default widget itself. What is worth knowing is the option set, because two of the entries below solve problems teams routinely solve with customization instead.

The dynamic placeholder is the clearest example. Showing a related value as the hint, rather than static text, tells the user what the field will default to if they leave it empty. That is a common request answered with an onchange, and it is an option.

The password attribute is the other. Masking a text field needs no custom widget, and people frequently build one because the attribute is easy to miss.

Studio's Text field type creates a character field rendered by this widget. To reproduce the core setup:

1. Open the form in Studio and drag a Text field onto it.
2. Set its label, which becomes the field's string.
3. Under the field's properties, set a placeholder if the field needs a static hint.
4. Save. The field renders with this widget without naming it.

Studio exposes the label, the placeholder and the standard visibility and required settings. It does not expose the dynamic placeholder option or the password attribute, both of which need view XML or a developer-mode edit of the field's options.

Implicit usage

<field name="reference"/>

No widget attribute needed. A character field falls through to this widget by type.

A dynamic placeholder

<field name="invoice_ref"
       options="{'placeholder_field': 'partner_ref'}"/>

The other field's value is shown as the hint while this one is empty, falling back to the static placeholder attribute.

A masked input

<field name="api_key" password="True"/>

An attribute rather than an option, and the reason a custom masking widget is rarely needed.

The extractor is the whole story of this widget, because it defines what every descendant inherits. It reads four things: the password attribute, which switches the input to a masked one; the autocomplete attribute, which is passed to the browser; the placeholder, which is the static hint; and two options driving the dynamic placeholder machinery.

Only the dynamic placeholder field is declared in the supported options. The other dynamic placeholder key and its model reference companion are read and never announced, which puts them in the same category as several other undeclared keys across Odoo: functional, but invisible to tooling.

The component itself adds one behavior worth naming: it trims the value. Descendants that need to preserve trailing spaces, such as the emoji variant, override that explicitly, which is a good way to spot a widget that cares about exact text.

The supported types include both single line and multi-line fields. Placing this widget on a multi-line field is legitimate and gives a single line input, which is occasionally exactly what a long field needs on a dense list.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The development branch is unstable and this may still change; we re-verify this page after the release.

The option set is unchanged. The declared dynamic placeholder option, the undeclared pair and the two attributes all behave the same on the development branch. The differences are the migration to the new props syntax, which affects patches rather than views.