I've been using this since it was new. I'm very frustrated to say the UI/UX hasn't seen any significant update.
Containers are still synced separately, so any fresh install of Firefox will have the tutorial UX and the default 4 containers, even after syncing.
Also, address bar completion is still monolithic, making it very easy to accidentally open a site in an undesired container. That can be worked around by adding every domain to a default container, but most of the utility of containers is to use several for a single domain, i.e. multiple email accounts each with their own container instances.
Containers are a feature I find very valuable, but they really need their UX to be a core browser feature, not an addon.
I had similar complaints about the UX for the built-in containers extension, so as a labor of love, I wrote a helper extension to make containers a little more intuitive:
This functionality seems to be partially included in the official extension now. There's a "search container name field", but it's not active when you open the pop-up (hence the partial).
I don't know when it arrived, I'm pretty sure it hasn't been there too long, but I don't pay too much attention to this extension's UI. I'm running Firefox 109.
It landed about a month ago. I'm the contributor who implement this patch and I already have another one in the work that would let you focus the filter box when you type "/".
Agree, it's also quite awkward to link a domain to a container, and sometimes it doesn't work well, for example gmail because it also uses Google.com (I want to separate Gmail and my Google search)
You can open a bookmark in a chosen tab via the context menu when right-clicking on a bookmark in e.g. your toolbar. I use this to separate Gmail accounts. I use private search for Google search.
Firefox MAC is one of the first extensions that I install, after uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Cookie Autodelete.
I install MAC despite my dislike for what the UI has become.
The UX was fine until Firefox started pushing its VPN service via this extension. I encourage the use of VPNs, that isn't my objection. But now the installation of MAC requires too many clicks just to configure it, and some of those clicks are to dismiss things that I didn't request.
Good UX practices:
1 = offer reasonable defaults
2 = be visually intelligible (make it easy to recognise borders, boxes, controls)
3 = make it easy to access important properties (don't bury or hide what people need)
4 = don't be annoying, nagging, exhausting, or confounding
5 = favour exposing features in an organised way
6 = let the user customise
The MAC extension suffers in points 2, 3, and 4 during installation. Now that Firefox has forced the grouping of all extensions in an Extension folder that cannot be moved, we now have a problem with point 6 too.
You can still pin an extension to the toolbar and if it's already pinned Firefox will honor your setting in Fx 109+. IIRC, we can also in the extension manifest.json force the addon to show in the toolbar by default.
Fortunately there are some cool extensions that do improve that logic. My favourite uses a new container for every AWS SSO login, so I can have multiple AWS accounts and/or roles on the go at the same time.
But completely agree, this should be a capability. It's like how Google Chrome profiles don't have the "open in another profile" menu option until you have two profiles already opened.
Also....for me. At one point a janked up Firefox instlal on 8.1 created something like 100+ duplicates of some of my containers, specifically ones names TEst and Test2.
So each time i setup a new browser and sync then, i have to go through and manually delete all the duplicates.
They dont re-appear once deleted and changes still sync (ie: if i add a URL rule to always open in x container) but holy crap is it annoying.
ya know.....it never occured to me to really track down the json file. Even though i totally know firefox really loves making use of them. Even had a sanitize script at one point that would kill any session on my work computer nightly and scrub my history without logging me out of sync account at a previous job.
I dont setup a new machine all that often that I care too much. I figured it was a misconfigured cloud DB point, that at best I could get Mozilla to clean up and let me re-sync, but even then didnt bother to open a ticket.
There is a json file with the containers, I also had a similar problem (temporary containers extension “leaked” containers and they got synced) but after having found that file (I believe it was containers.json or something similar) and manually removing from that all the bad elements I managed to get those out from syncing it to new instances.
Also, the order of the containers isn't synced properly. When you have a few containers, it's helpful to have container configured in the same order on every device you use.
Have tried that - but the patterns there aren't case insensitive (and no way I could find to make them so); the one that I use is a fork of containerise - search for bifulsushi on bitbucket
It's a bit tedious to set it up at first but it's the only way I know of to get the following functionality:
With GMail open in a "google" container, non-google domain links open in non-google containers (configurable which container if any). Google domain links (drive, calendar, maps, etc) open in the google container.
Once setup, this means in your "standard" or non-specified container you can log out of all google services and stop their most explicit tracking of you through simple account cookies being read across the web while you search, etc. No longer when you visit sites that allow sign-in with google will your account name be auto-suggested, because the sites don't have that level of tracking info when you're browsing and searching outside of the google container. Viewing random trash yt videos will no longer sway the recs you get in yt.
The downside is that my google searches, done outside the google gulag, run into captcha prompts b/c I guess google search doesn't expect that much consistent traffic from someone who isn't signed into one of their services.
edit: this also means that you can, for example, containerize gmaps and set it up so that non-google domain links followed out of maps open in a non-google container. clicking a link to a business's website from their gmaps page no longers propagates your google account cookie to their site, etc. it opens in a different container, automatically.
You don't like the UI? It feels like a core feature to me, the only serious friction I have is that I also use temporary containers which overrides my selection to open a certain site in a particular container.
But you just tell it not to open a temporary containers for that domain and you're good.
So really I've only seen this take much thought when combined with temporary containers.
And that drip is just as important for google to avoid an insanely huge monopoly lawsuit, so this is just the usual shitting on certain open-source projects without any reason.
Truer than ever. What other browser engine is there beside safari on macs? Not even Microsoft found it worthwhile to maintain an independent browser engine - in this world firefox is an open-source gem and instead of bringing it down for whatever reason we should try to preserve it.
Google is currently facing a search monopoly lawsuit where their payment to Mozilla is being used as evidence against them. If they were funding Mozilla to prevent a browser monopoly, the strategy certainly backfired.
Not the parent poster, but is criticizing a browser I've used steadily since it became a thing for letting itself become primarily funded by it's largest competitor really "shitting on it"? Do you really not think there is a conflict of interest there?
I've been using this for a few years now and love it. I wish for two things.
1) i wish there was a way to automatically delete cookies/cache/history from specific containers every time. My personal container needs cookies and logins saved. My other containers don't need persistent cookies.
2) I've always wished for protonvpn to apply to only specific containers. Reading this now though, I see firefox's VPN does that so that's very cool, I might need to look into their vpn.
It will let you open containers that trash cookies on close. You can also set certain URL's to always open in a tmp container which is useful for sites that only let you read x amount of article per month.
I use this and it works well. You can also add a prefix to your temporary containers. I prefixed mine with “Mr. Meseeks #<Container Number”, which made it pretty hilarious if you also use the “kill tab after time” setting: Mr. Meseeks tabs closing in the background, completing their purpose.
Incognito isn't as private as the name suggests. I was surprised one day to open a tab in Incognito and see the site I visited knew who I was. That's because I had logged in to a related site in a tab I'd forgotten about in another Incognito window.
My assumption up to then was that each newly opened Incognito tab or window was it's own private session, but this turned out to be wrong - they all share state, as if you had one separate but shared profile called Incognito. This was a little upsetting as I'd been using Incognito for years without realising the data sharing going on.
Temporary Containers does what I'd expected from Incognito. Each new temporary container has its own isolated cookies etc from all the others. So now I open a TC when I want to visit a site without identity or tracking, or to login temporarily with a different account, and don't use Incognito at all.
incognito shares state between tabs. temporary containers can have a fresh container for every tab, so your tabs are isolated. you can also use it in a way that by default every site you visit is using a temporary container, with certain urls set to use their corresponding long term containers -- if i go to github, it opens in a github container, if i click a link to some random dev's site, it opens in a temp container, etc.
to provide context, i still use incognito, but i consider incognito mostly about hiding things from myself -- i use it almost exclusively for porn, because i don't want my porn habits in my browser suggestions. temporary tabs still land in the recent urls and such.
I expressed myself poorly. In retrospect it sounds like the exact opposite of what I meant, in fact.
What I meant is if you open what you would otherwise open in an incognito window in a container instead, you can restart your browser without those tabs being closed and the respective state being lost.
i use this, it sounds like in a way inverted from the way you do -- i have containers for any site that i want to maintain persistence on, then default to a tmp container
In regards to #1 - we have a feature (WIP right now) that adds the ability to delete data (cache, cookies and local storage) per container. Look for that in a future release.
I combine containers with profiles to achieve this...
I have totally separate profiles for:
'temp' (delete everything on close)
'shopping' (containers for my common stores)
'finance' (containers for banks, etc)
Gives a lot of flexibility, and I'm a lot less nervous opening stuff in 'temp' session when I know everything else is safely in totally different profiles/directories.
It has its own client application so it's a little more than simply relabelling a product. I find Mozilla client easier for less techy people so I guess both products complement themselve by targeting a different subset of the population.
You can take care of #1 the way people here suggested, but I believe you can also do it backwards by having firefox delete ALL cookies at exit and whitelisting some domain's cookies. (Cookies sand Site data, check "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" and hit Manage Exceptions right next to it to whitelist some domains)
For #2 you do not need Firefox's VPN service. I am using it with wireguard and a socks5 proxy on the other end. I have a 'proxy' container configured but you can have more than one container with proxy as well. (In advanced proxy settings the syntax is socks://10.0.99.82:1080 )
This is so much more powerful than first party isolation in Chrome. Firefox is on the only browser with something like this. I love having multiple tabs open and logged into the same website with different accounts/cookies. I also use this in conjunction with Temporary Containers so every tab is a new container automatically. If I left-click a link it will navigate keeping the same container. If I control+click it will open the link in a new/separate container. Also I use another one called Container Proxy so some containers go out through different VPNs. As much as Mozilla is fucking up Firefox currently, this is the 1 thing no other browser does better.
But why is this REALLY "more powerful than first party isolation"? I don't need this feature every day, in case I do - just create separate profile and it's easy to run it right from toolbar. The only usecase I can remember: specific domains can be automatically opened in container - and that's a good feature to have, but not really a dealbreaker. Another difference: organization as a tab in the same window - not that really needed, just a different UI for not commonly used feature.
I use this with the Temporary Containers extension, so every tab is a new container, and a new session to the website I'm visiting. When I close the tab/container, all information about that site is lost. My browsing behavior - by default - is cookies live for as long as the container lives (and other cached elements). It makes me feel safer, browsing online, that I have to opt-in to remembering cookies and having them persist longer than the container. I can assign things over to the static containers like work-play-etc. For development I can have several tabs open with several independent sessions/logins going to the same website. When I tried to do this with Chrome it was 'clunky' to run separate Chrome profiles, which seem to be separate instances. I do remember an extension to do multiple in-the-same-browser sessions, but it was using a 3rd party service. I can have multiple sessions going in the same window in Firefox. As I understand, FPI prevents caching being used as a means to spy where you've been. My naive understanding is that containers encompass more than the cached elements FPI segregates, including things like fonts or localstorage. (I'm probably wrong) The only blindspot I see in Firefox is I wish preferences for extensions were per-container as well. I still use uMatrix, so if I've unblocked JS for a domain in 1 container, I don't want it unblocked for the same domain in an entirely separate container.
Also, for some sites where I do "Sign in with Google", I like being able to 'stitch together' those session cookies by opening sites in the "Google" container so i can just waltz right into the "other site". On my other containers, they don't have the session cookie for Google in the background so I'm good. I use this for work-related things with SSO. Instead of naming the "static containers" "Work, Play, etc", I just call them the SSO-provider, and I know if I move an existing container into that or open a new tab using that container it will have the login I need.
My default settings are pretty locked down. Umatrix blocks a lot in my new temporary containers, and then I gradually unblock things.
Wait, Firefox handles extension preferences globally? This is exactly what I've been wishing Chrome would do. I've spent a ton of time writing weird scripts and hacking Chrome to copy and sync various extension preferences from one profile to another.
Of course ideally I could specify specific extensions to work globally vs per profile.
(I'm perfectly fine having different profiles use different windows)
When I worked for an agency, I used this feature ALL the time. It had to be easy for me to switch between, for example, Trello boards of different clients or different Datadog accounts.
Even now, working at a single company, I use multi-account containers to keep tabs open for our different AWS and Datadog accounts.
I use multi-account containers and they are wonderful. Combined with Simple Tab Groups[0] I have different workspaces set up, all with different creds and different auto-logins.
Chrome has a version of this that doesn't work properly (much like "Incognito" mode doesn't work properly). This should be one of the biggest selling points of FF.
Tab Groups were better when they were baked into the browser. They were extremely buggy when the code was removed and moved into an extension. Not only often losing all of my tabs - but completely forgetting all of my tab groups altogether. Causing me to lose not only important data but also having to re-organize all my tabs into tab groups only to inevitably have to redo all the work next time FF decided it wanted to crash (which was multiple times a day at that point due to the extension...). It happened with such regularity that I grew sick of it and it was the single motivating factor that pushed me to use Chrome as my default browser.
I can only hope/assume they've gotten better since then - but it burned me really, really bad. So much that it still pisses me off talking about it all these years later.
Two of the original features that were extremely buggy were a hotkey to open up a visual overview of tab groups (originally Ctrl+Shift+E) and a way to search for a tab and reduce the number of visible tab groups to only groups containing a tab matching that search.
I see in the screenshots that this functionality seems to exist but also (based on the color coding) plays nicely with containers now. Would you be willing to vouch that it is more stable nowadays? Because if it isn't a steaming pile of shit that crashes if you so much as look in its direction that would certainly motivate me to return back to Firefox.
> Tab Groups were better when they were baked into the browser. They were extremely buggy when the code was removed and moved into an extension. Not only often losing all of my tabs - but completely forgetting all of my tab groups altogether. Causing me to lose not only important data but also having to re-organize all my tabs into tab groups only to inevitably have to redo all the work next time FF decided it wanted to crash (which was multiple times a day at that point due to the extension...). It happened with such regularity that I grew sick of it and it was the single motivating factor that pushed me to use Chrome as my default browser.
This hasn't happened to me -- my biggest issues have been around mistakenly clicking into a browser group in a second browser window.
Since I have two browsers open, I keep one for sort of ephemeral stuff which isn't on a browser group at all, then main stuff (email, slack, etc) on the one. Note that pinned tabs also work fine -- I have a pinned tab that's not in a container at all (my personal email) and it's fine across all groups.
If it helps, the extension now takes copious backups across browser upgradest at the very least (that I have to delete from time to time), files named `STF-backups-FF-<FF version>`.
> I can only hope/assume they've gotten better since then - but it burned me really, really bad. So much that it still pisses me off talking about it all these years later.
> Two of the original features that were extremely buggy were a hotkey to open up a visual overview of tab groups (originally Ctrl+Shift+E) and a way to search for a tab and reduce the number of visible tab groups to only groups containing a tab matching that search.
Sorry to hear that... I have to say that I don't use the hotkeys that much -- I don't use a visual over view, I just go up to the add on, click it, switch into the workspace and usually I'm there for an 1-4 hours.
Maybe you could look through the release notes? I don't know what the version you used last was, but I defnitely haven't lost tabs or been very frustrated with STG in a long time.
The color coding is fantastic. I have most groups linked to a container profile, all new tabs open in the profile and everything is tidy, separate, and color coded.
I can definitely vouch that it's more stable these days -- I am daily driving it and haven't thought about it in what has to be months to years. It's a crucial part of my workflow -- I use it to seriously separate work that I do for various projects (of course I have to re-login to Github, Gitlab, etc).
Thank you for taking the time to respond back to me - I honestly appreciate it.
The release notes honestly weren't all that helpful - but looking over the Git repo, it looks like a lot of the major crashing/session restoration bugs were squashed in 2020-2021 and the backup functionality was improved enough to make backups more user friendly and somewhat more automated (aka: worth using and not 4 days out of date). There are still some flaws but those flaws come from the extension suffering the limitations of being a web extension - which is a tangentially related but another huge gripe of mine.
Now if only I could find a way to restore my context-menu tab switching - a feature lost when FireGestures was killed off. I didn't use any of the other gesture functionality at all - I only used the "[Popup] List All Tabs" feature which worked great with tab groups back in the day. (See: "Wheel Gestures" http://www.xuldev.org/firegestures/features.php)
E: (moments before I was about to post...)
Holy. Shit. Gesturefy recreated that functionality - and around the time I had given up on FF too. Back to Firefox I go! I had tried Foxy Gestures thinking it was the successor to FireGestures but I never gave Gesturefy a chance back then. In case I was bad at describing it, you can test it out yourself after setting it up in the settings: "[Popup] All Tabs" as a wheel gesture - it is an absolute game changer and I am SO GLAD I can go back to my circa-2013~2016 workflow after all these years. Only downside is continuing to scroll doesn't highlight tabs to change - so a small step back - wonder if it is even possible with how WE's are limited.
Glad to hear you were able to at least find some remnants of the issues (and that they were solved!).
The hobbling of web extensions seems only set to continue but really glad that super useful stuff can still be done with them (and hopefully that continues, or the browser fracturing intensifies).
We use different AWS accounts for different purposes at work. It would be an extreme productivity loss if I had to go back to using something other than Firefox's containers.
This does work. Not quite as nice as Firefox’s multi-account containers because tabs can’t co-mingle in the same window. But totally serviceable.
I use a combination of both every day at work.
I like chrome for some things too because you can make a single-site-browser window in chrome, so certain websites can be treated like first class applications in the alt tab menu.
> I like chrome for some things too because you can make a single-site-browser window in chrome, so certain websites can be treated like first class applications in the alt tab menu.
yes absolutely.
I did this for my local jupyter notebook server and pinned it to my taskbar. effectively works like a desktop app.
The amount of storage that these chrome profiles occupy on the hard disk is sometimes irksome. I have not compared it to Firefox though.
It's not an identical feature, but I have some workflows which require Chromium and compartmentalization between a multiple accounts, and Brave's profiles aren't a bad alternative.
You're correct. It does, but the last time I tried it it does not prompt on launch as Brave can, which provides a nice reality check for my addled mind.
I dislike certain aspects of Brave for other reasons, but this is why I have an unholy number of browsers installed and end up making use of nearly all of them regularly, unfortunately.
There may be other Chromium-based browsers which do this, but none that I use: on launch the user is (optionally) prompted with a profile selection tool, with additional options to create a new profile or go into a guest session. I appreciate this because without it I often end up wondering why something isn't behaving properly, and after a moment of confusion then realize I'm in the wrong profile.
It's not perfect, and I prefer Firefox's rules-driven containers, but for anything which requires Chrome I've found it sufficient.
Ah, that sounds nearly identical to the standard launch-time profile picker from the Chromium base - example from Chrome https://i.imgur.com/7b7YqUY.png
Sure is, thanks. At the time I settled on Brave for that use case I saw no such behavior from any of my other Chromium-based browsers. Either Brave upstreamed it, or I did something wrong on my end (likely).
Pretty sure the setting has been around for a while, possibly upstreamed from brave but I feel like it was around before then. It’s pretty hidden tho, and most ppl don’t want it and get confused why it even exists so it’s possible there isn’t great documentation on it.
I have heard so much about this browser from dev & tech podcasts and websites[1]. Those who use it really love it, I wish their website had a video demo at least.
Some ui/ux issues aside, this is an incredibly useful feature for both work and personal use.
An example of it being useful for work: I can have several AWS consoles for different environments open, so I can quickly compare configs between environments.
For personal use, I can contain facebook inside its own container so it’s cookies don’t pollute my regular browsing
Coolest feature is per container socks5 support so each container can send traffic through a different socks 5 server. Any VPN offering socks5 on their gateways should work. I'm using IVPN which expose socks5 on each of their WireGuard servers - there is demo on their blog - https://www.ivpn.net/blog/socks5-proxies-app-based-vpn-tunne...
With different profiles you have different settings -> completely independent connection settings, if you want. What's the difference here with Chromium profiles for example?
I think ff's containers are generally more powerful. Here's a random example: I live outside of the country I was born in, but I still have bank accounts and stuff there. These bank accounts freak out if I log in from my actual IP. Rather than needing to run a system-wide VPN every time I want to use one of those sites, I can set a rule that will automatically open them in a container (in the same window) with preset custom connection settings.
I've used these for over a year. Where the experience falls short is when using OAuth flows where either the requestor or provider is in a different container.
E.g. Slack (work) => Twitter (social media) => ~~broken~~ as the redirect doesn't go back to the (work) container.
I can't think of a fix because any there is would break the privacy of containers.
You can right click a link, and open it in the other container. It's clunky, but has worked for me so far.
The UX for default containers could really benefit from some kind of context-awareness, but I'm not sure what that would look like.
I'm thinking an intermediary tab that gives you a list of default containers (instead of only a single option or none at all) to choose from when opening a domain. Then, maybe, you could set a default choice based on the originating container. Or maybe a tree of sub-containers... This is where addon-defined UX makes sense.
Pretty useful. Something I learned at some point was that you can actually combine this with Wireguard: If you dig into the extension, there's a feature that lets you set a SOCKS5 proxy for a profile. You can then point it to a running Wireproxy to go from SOCKS5 to Wireguard. Could be handy.
Accessible via the UI: click into the extension, click the right arrow next to a container, select "Manage This Container", then "Advanced Proxy Settings" and you can enter a SOCKS5 URI. And of course, this requires the aforementioned extension, not just the built-in container tabs feature. (Confusingly, Firefox does have this feature "cooked in", presumably they just expose a bunch of it via WebExtension APIs so that things like Multi-Account Containers can work.)
I really wish that this, and the other extensions it enables, were supported on Firefox for Android. There are a number of browsers that throw away your browsing data on every session (Firefox Focus, Duck Duck Go), and regular Firefox has the option to, but what I really want is to save cookies and other browsing data only on particular sites where I not only have an account, but also use it enough that logging in with autofill is too much of a hassle. Temporary containers allows this on desktop, but there's no mobile support.
If you're not looking to sign into multiples accounts on the same website, look into state partitioning/first party isolation. If you are looking to sign into multiple accounts, I use multiple browsers for this.
Very useful if you have multiple Outlook accounts (e.g. school, work, personal), because outlook.com doesn't allow you to switch between accounts without logging out and back in.
Or gcp or other Google products. They technically supports it by appending different authuser query params, but whenever you click something it's bound to choose the wrong one.
Fifteen years ago I developed CookiePie [1]. You can see in the video opening two different gmail accounts in different tabs on the same window. This was a relatively successful Firefox extension to use separate and temporary cookie containers in different tabs. Since the Firefox API does include these capabilities, it was a pure hack, but it worked, just it was impossible to cope with every new upgrade of Firefox.
Briefly, the core of the hack was this:
(1) Firefox network hooks were not linked to UI tabs.
(2) So, I traverse all the object graph and find indirect links.
(3) I used those links to connect the network hooks with the UI, even when they conceptually were independent from the FF extension.
I sent the extension to the "Extend Firefox Prize" but didn't came with a single mention.
I tried to like this the other day but it was a real hassle.
I have 3 accounts on a website. I thought I could setup 3 different containers, one for each account. But it turns out that switching between containers is not simple. Whenever I tried to switch, I got a pop up from Firefox asking me if I was really sure I wanted to switch my default container for that website. Sometimes it sent me into a redirect loop with the prompt also. I did some googling and found that the consensus was that containers simply aren’t meant to be used that way.
Firefox Multi Account Containers seem to assume you will always use one container for one website, and you can’t easily use multiple containers for a single site. Or at least, it’s very inconvenient to do so.
Unintuitively, you want to have no default set for that domain, and you want to open an empty tab of that container type (by long clicking the new tab button or clicking the container addon button itself to get a list). Once you have a container open, middle-clicking the new tab button will open an empty tab in that container.
I agree that the UX is horrendous. Most of that is a byproduct of implementing it as an addon instead of a feature.
I think this only happens if you use the "Always open this site in container" function.
I use MACs with a bunch of different AWS accounts for work, and the only papercut is having to right-click my bookmarks and choosing which container to open the console in (as opposed to having MACs integrated with bookmarks themselves)
What you're describing is the main use case for this. Are you sure you're using it correctly? You're not supposed to change default container for that webpage all the time or anything like that.
I for instance have a bookmark for a page. I right click it and select which container to opening it in. I often open it in different containers, have different tabs of it open at the same time etc.
Based on some of the comments, maybe I'm "holding it wrong." I don't know, but I spent a good 20-30 minutes trying to get this sorted out before deciding it wasn't worth the time.
Love Firefox, and I like what the Multi-Account Containers are trying to be, but it just didn't work for me. And it sounds like I'm not the only one who's run into this issue.
I went through the same process when I tried it a few weeks ago for multiple GitHub accounts.
I also uninstalled the extension after fumbling around with it for 5-10 minutes and not being able to open multiple containers of github without it forgetting what I just tried to setup or constantly bugging me about switching the default container.
Interesting, I accomplish this just fine and it's my primary use for containers in Firefox. I don't know what your workflow is like, but I just click the "+" tab button, select one of the other containers I want, and a new tab opens in that container. Type address of website and continue as normal.
You absolutely can.
Open a new tab of containerA and login.
Open a new tab of containerB and login with a different account.
I think there's an option somewhere that allows you to select "always open [website] in [container]" which might be triggering that popup.
The feature is incredibly buggy. I wrote a sibling comment that details some of the glitchiness.
It's dangerous to use a system that can't keep sessions independent. There are bugs that may cause you to inadvertently take action in the wrong account. I nearly botched one of our own accounts.
To isolate the cookies and JavaScript of a domain from other domains.
For example, Facebook is notorious for reading third-party site cookies and vice-versa. A collection of associations (X Facebook user visited Y sites) is then sold as a portfolio for targeted advertising.
I agree this isn't the feature that provides the most utility; it's simply the one that was originally at the front of the devs' minds.
isolation of cookies and other data between websites. although now I think firefox does that per tab anyway&site combo nowadays anyway. I mainly use it for multiple reddit accounts and gmail accounts. also good when combined with cookie auto delete for test purpose between testing site changes "freshly".
Ugh, same. I thought I was the only one that found these to be impossibly buggy.
The container setup/management UI is glitchy and it often forgets! containers that were created. It feels like a hack week project that got shipped to production.
Despite having containers, Firefox sometimes wants to open the managed website in your current window. Or doesn't ask you at all when you have multiple containers for the same site.
There's a lack of distinction between containerized / non-containerized windows. The colored tabs do not work or break down, leaving you in a mysterious or even dangerous state.
The integration with password management tools is obviously rough. But coupled with the browser's own attempts at session management, plus containers, it's a UX nightmare to log into the right container.
The last time I checked this out was last year. Maybe it's better now? Given Mozilla staffing, though, I'd guess not.
I really want this to work, but the current solution is worse than none at all. I've made do with keeping multiple browsers for different tasks.
Be careful if you use this. It breaks unexpectedly and that can lead to the wrong actions being taken in the wrong accounts.
The struggle is that the container addon does its own syncing, separate from the browser-wide Firefox account sync (that decides the soon should be installed).
Because syncing is a separate step - yet it still happens concurrently/unpredictably in the background - there is no avoiding the default new user flow that creates 4 default containers at install.
I mean there is if they'd fix it :) . Don't sync those 4 if they already exist, don't sync at all otherwise. I would assume if you are smart enough to use sync you're smart enough to know that it will blow away old "local" settings.
The tool needs to get out of the way. People are busy and have a million other things on their minds. Grappling with an obtuse, broken product is a hurdle.
As it stands, Firefox containers are 10x more complicated than regular browsing and it exposes sharp edges.
>>The container setup/management UI is glitchy and it often forgets! containers that were created.
been running it for years, never once has it forgot containers...
>>Firefox sometimes wants to open the managed website in your current window. Or doesn't ask you at all when you have multiple containers for the same site.
ok, so you right click and have it reopen in the correct container, not a big deal. Though I cant say I have ever had this problem either despite using it very day all day, 16 hrs + per say with lots of containers and tabs (often over 100 tabs open)
>>The integration with password management tools is obviously rough.
I use bitwarden, have no issue using it inside of various containers
I'm not sure how this fits against profiles, which has been in Firefox since Netscape Navigator?
Does containers also allow multiple winddows to share a profile?
For example, I have a work profile, and a home profile - and each has a window for browsing (eg: hn), and a window on my laptop screen for videochat (so when I look at the chat, I don't look way above the camera - which happen if I look at my main screen).
I can move tabs between these windows too (eg: quickly read something while still "looking" at the camera).
Does containers also allow this "single container, multiple windows" use-case?
I have limited experience in using multiple Firefox profiles, but assuming it works like Chrome's, I like Multi-Account Containers instead because it lets me mix and match tabs running on different containers if you really have to.
I mean, I appreciate keeping a single window dedicated to my Work container running all of my work tabs to properly isolate my sessions, but sometimes I have services that I have to login on other profiles (e.g., I use a consultant Miro account that I DO want to run on the same window, even if it's not using my Work container).
It's also a lot easier to identify which tabs are running which containers thanks to their colored tab markers and the container name indicated on the address bar. It's essential if you have to say, login to two separate Gmail sessions on the same window without their sessions getting mixed up.
Finally, it's different from profiles because you can optionally associate websites to containers (e.g., if I open ycombinator.com it's opened using my Personal container while opening miro.com automatically loads a different container, while I disable this feature for sites that I login across multiple containers for different contexts, such as Gmail or the AWS Console)
I Love the Multi account feature. And its related extentions Google and facebook containers. And especially the Temporary Container extension. [1]
Only hassle I have is that I sometimes have to disable the google one if a site requires google auth but is in a non google container. Redirection wont work otherwise. Only temporarily until auth has finished.
Also I like the integration with Mozilla VPN per container. But I wish they would support disabling the VPN for some or in reverse only enable tunneling for some containers. There was a an open issue for that. [2]
If your company uses gmail, or any other single sign on, its a really good tool for separating work/home digital life.
multiple accounts for the same site
Facebook/instagram/reddit/youtube is really hard to have separate non-linked logins. Plus its a massive faff logging in and out. assigning accounts to tabs saves time.
keeping your youtube recommendations clear
Youtube's recommendation algorithm looks at all you are playing and figures out what you should watch next. If you see something music based, then it will hard pivot your recommendations to music. If you have something populist, then expect a fucktonne of clickbait.
Have a "clean" and "dirty" profile really improves the quality of the videos I get shown.
This extension gives the ability to create bookmarks that open in a specific container automatically.
When dealing with AWS accounts that are configured to use SSO. I’ll have to use IdP to login into awsapps.com. Then I have to choose AWS account and then click a Role that I would like to use for session. This is troublesome and breaks my flow. I wanted a way to quickly jump into a specific account without thinking too much.
For each AWS account that I need to use, I’ve copied a link from awsapps.com pointing at specific permissions set. When opening this link I will be taken to a specific AWS account, and if the session is expired it will prompt for IdP login and proceed to AWS account. Next, I’ve created a bookmark and crafted a url that uses the mentioned extension. It will open link in to a “staging” account in Firefox container company-staging.
Yep, only thing it doesn't work well with for me it's teams web (because teams is so boneheaded in that you can't be logged in to two tenants at the same time). Osteen the container tab gets stuck in a reload loop and then the dropped icecream picture "Oops something went wrong".
Yeah Teams just refuses to work in either container. Only works properly when it's in the main instance of Firefox.
This is what it was like a while ago though, I haven't tested it recently because I haven't had a need to log in to other tenants anymore since I moved jobs.
Honestly, my own testing and all these complaints and that it hasn't been given simple care and feeding mean I'm going to avoid it until all this changes.
This is a great feature that has a terrible implementation.
It stubbornly tries to open both Gmail and Youtube in Google container. Even if I remove that container and create separate ones for Gmail and Youtube, when I try to open those sites in their respective containers, it will refuse to open it. If I restart firefox and retry, it goes back to creating the Google container and open both in that container.
Absolutely terrible UX for something that could be as simple as:
1. Right click on a tab and let me select a container
2. Ask if I want to remember it.
3. Actually remember it.
It actually shows the container in the address-bar which is a perfect spot for me to click on that and change it to another container - but noooo, that would be so obvious hence clicking on it does nothing. Great UX.
Everytime I want to support Firefox and come back to it, shit like this just drives me mad and makes me go to the terrible but polished alternative of Chrome. Sigh.
I'm using it since it was launched. For my use case, it lacked the ability to use a different container for a page based on the entire URL, not just the domain. For example, I've certain GitHub orgs that I'm using a separate account for. So the built-in ability to open sites based on the domain does not work for me.
I found the extension containerise [1], which offers the ability to assign containers based on globbing and/or a regex pattern. It's not something a typical "normal" user would need, so it's reasonable to not include this kind of feature in the built-in account container implementation.
- will the mozilla vpn keep a static ip assigned per container?
- is the browser footprint completely unique per container where the website called on thinks you're a fully different user? or its just seperating cookies and sessions?
- is this just to keep accounts seperate or helps with privacy?
I've been using this for a few months now and I love it. Along side temporary containers[1] and tridactyl[2] which gives
- auto containerization based on url match
- keyboard driven way to open new pages in a specific container
FF transforms into a powerful browser OS running applications with hard boundaries.
The only UX issue (which admittedly could be because I have changed the theme to be minimal by hacking userChrome) is that sometimes the temporary containers I spawn are the ones I need to retain (user storage) etc and I tend to forget that and loose data.
Yeah, its a good way to circumvent tracking / fingerprinting mechanisms. Anonymization primitive.
But the primary usecase for me is to access a rarely used account temporarily without having to logout and login from the main account (AWS, Cloudflare, Google, etc).
One thing that's been working well for me for years: just use separate browsers for separate things.
Firefox, FireFox Nightly. It takes little time for you to understand the context(you see the icon or browser and know exactly what "profile" it is), there's no suggestion or link interference etc.
It's fine if you only have a few separate concerns to separate (similarly you can also use multiple browser profiles) but it's not really scalable if you want to separate 10s of sites, clients, etc.
I've been using distinct FF profiles to separate work browsing from personal browsing on the same machine. I give each profile a differently colored theme to visually separate the two and discourage accidentally using one profile for another's purpose.
Would multi-account containers be better for that workflow?
Succinctly yes, as this was what I was doing until recently.
I had about 6 or 7 Firefox profiles encompassing 2 of my businesses, clients, and some administration of my fiancée's companies she runs.
For each of my two businesses I had two separate profiles, one with personal accounts and a second I logged in with 'Admin' accounts for various services and infrastructure.
It was a little tedious, but it worked. However I would waste so much time tabbing through multiple Firefox windows working out what was the correct one for the job in hand.
Firefox Multi-Account containers got that down to two profiles, and I'd say I really only work 99% of the time in a single profile.
Simple Tab Groups is invaluable too to reduce the tab 'clutter' that comes from working out of a single profile/window.
Lastly as an added bonus, when I was comfortable with Multi-Account Containers, I successfully weened my fiancée off of Chrome and onto Firefox so she could flick between different accounts for those businesses she works with too.
I tried this a while back but I've found having two instances of Firefox for work/personal much easier to seperate my life with. I just hotkeyed the launch of the work and personal one and use different themes on the two browsers.
Last week I finally removed some bugs from my multi-instance chrome scripts on macOS.
I basically have different applications of chrome, each with a different profile. They wacht have a different app icon, browser color, and extensions.
It helps me focus a lot to have a different application (cmd-tab entry) for dev, media, general browsing.
Social media and other time traps are blocked on my general and dev browser.
Works very well I have to say. It copies Chrome using clonefiles (CoW on apfs) to save space.
The only thing is that updating goes through the main browser (automatic updates are buggy in this case). And I have to codesign when there’s an update, but the scripts take care of that.
Why don't we have complete main domain isolation as an option?
It would work like containers, but they would be automatically created for each domain you visit.
Go visit youtube.com and anything loaded from that page is in the same container.
You'd have to log into each google property as the sites would be separated from one another, and there would probably be a need to merge these containers if say www.example.com and example.com are the same site (or automerge if there is a 302 redirect).
Sounds like you are suggesting First-Party Isolation (FPI) which you can enable in Firefox. Don't know what the state of it is, seems to be off by default, or depending on the tracking protection setting.
Interacts badly with some GOOGLE rest-form URLs because you can't assign a /0/thing path to more than one M-A-C and google don't distinguish your google profile (identity) in the URL.
Clumsy UI. It's useful (I use it) but its just not as simple as it could be.
Auto assigning a URL to a container is complicated. Opening and re-opening a URL in a container is complicated. Saving container state so you can re-open the same things is .. (you guessed it) complicated.
Cargo containers from those big ships are well-known and people can assume that each container brings a set of homogeneous items. The word "container" pictures an isolated thing, which is what the add-on provides.
Hi! Sorry to post here, but I couldn't find any way to contact you. You wrote here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30301639 that you set up et and cloudflare tunnel. Can you tell me how? It doesn't work for me, et doesn't see an open port on the server.
these containers come in real handy when you want to watch a youtube video but you don't want the youtube algorithm recommending you similar videos for weeks just because you clicked on one video.
its similar to opening the video in an incognito window but with a container it will remember whatever cookie settings you choose instead of asking you each time
I don't get how Chrome does not have it and very few people are aware that there's this browser called Firefox that has this feature that's very hard to live without. Another thing Ctrl+Tab MRU. I just could not get back to using Chrome for these 2 reasons alone.
Because it would interfere with Google's data collection and so they don't want you to have it. Instead of having disposable browsing containers they make Chrome itself automatically log into your Google account, then offer to continuously upload all of your browsing data via Google Chrome Sync. It's an anti-privacy user story.
Can anyone clarify what this provides compared to the built-in container support in Firefox? On stock Firefox, it appears that I can do everything listed in the documentation above, with the exception that this extension appears to allow you to configure a domain to automatically open in a given container. Is that the only difference?
I could not have done my last job without this feature, because it required assuming multiple dummy identities across various chat platforms communicating with each other. I still use it to separate out accounts for different parts of my life (work vs conference planner vs personal).
Heh - no, just a tool to let companies support chat interoperability between different apps. Lots of companies are running multiple chat apps simultaneously, either due to acquisitions or because there's a department that stubbornly refuses to migrate to a new one.
SOCKS5 proxy per containers setting is there. Click the extension icon (in the toolbar not in the url bar) -> Manage Containers -> click the container you want to manage -> Advanced proxy settings
Each account gets it's own slice, each tab gets it's own transient unit. You get nested cgroups and accounting for free. Eliminating the resource hog problem and prioritizing workloads.
I often visit news sites such as Hacker News. Can I use this "multi-account container" addon + something to get an experience like "iPhone Screen Time" and track my viewing time on news sites?
This feature is possibly the main reason why I use FireFox in stead of any alternative. It is just so very nice to be able to log into multiple google accounts (in my case) at the same time.
Would be cool if each container could generate a unique browser fingerprint. Right now they are sharing the same fingerprint, which isn't great for privacy.
I think this is what the Temporary Containers extension does? For me, it's a fundamental part of my browsing at this point, what I install immediately after installing an adblocker.
I feel resentful that the Temporary Containers extension isn't available on mobile Firefox. To me it would be as if adblocking extensions wouldn't be available. It's one thing of many that seems really different about mobile Firefox, to a point where the cynical part of me feels like mobile Firefox is being obsequious to advertisers or something for some reason in a way desktop is not.
It certainly defied my expectations. Chrome is the same. All I can think is that they wanted an inprivate window's tabs to share a jar and that then gets kinda complicated with popping tabs into their own window, putting them back, flicking between those accidentally while dragging a tab, etc.
Looking at the docs it appears that Safari gets around this by just having a separate jar per tab? On desktop at least, mobile appears to be shared.
Before FPI, containers were a good way to isolate cookies. Nowadays, it's a bit less useful for that. However, it still offers a nice solution to connect to multiple accounts simultaneously, have a different vpn/proxy per container. Also, it could be extended to isolate more things (e.g. different level of privacy settings, history, extensions, etc)
is the button to confirm opening the the url in a new container broken for anyone else? it just doesn't respond for me and has been this way for a while.
- You can have multiples tabs in different containers in a single window.
- You can tell your browser you always want to open a given site in a given container, so if you forget and try to open in the wrong one, it will remind you and give you the option to use the right one.
- The name of the container you're in is shown at the end of the address bar, in the unlikely case you forget. Every tab has a thin line of a different color per containers as well, so it's easier to tell them apart.
None of these things offers a big advantage over using virtual desktops, for example, but it's good to have choices.
> You can have multiples tabs in different containers in a single window.
I literally want the _opposite_ of that. Chrome makes it so that a Window is specific to a profile. Makes it very simple to keep say Work and Home profiles separate, for example. Especially if you set color schemes for each window.
I wish Firefox just had proper profiles. Multi account containers are absolutely no replacement for proper profiles with separate bookmarks, extensions, cookies, etc.
Experience is still lacking compared to Chrome profiles. Chrome profiles are so much better UX wise than any other solution, especially the color coding of the window.
I want ONE window with all my tabs, in a vertical List (tree Style Tabs and/or Sideberry) which is another feature Chrome lacks completely, it implementation of Vertical Tabs is TERRIBLE
yup you log into a profile and then the containers and its profiles and settings are a child of that so you can use containers on different devices with same settings and containers
Containers are still synced separately, so any fresh install of Firefox will have the tutorial UX and the default 4 containers, even after syncing.
Also, address bar completion is still monolithic, making it very easy to accidentally open a site in an undesired container. That can be worked around by adding every domain to a default container, but most of the utility of containers is to use several for a single domain, i.e. multiple email accounts each with their own container instances.
Containers are a feature I find very valuable, but they really need their UX to be a core browser feature, not an addon.