Firefox Containers Preview

It's been available for years in stable, including the management page on the settings, if you enable them in about:config (privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). Plenty of us have been using them for a long long time without extensions.

Based on the list of features, the announcement appears to just be flipping those settings on by default.

> Are the containers created by the extension already shared with Firefox’s native container manager, or is there some migration process? Can I safely uninstall the extension and keep my existing containers, names, colors, icons, cookies, and active sessions?

Most likely those addons flipped at least the first setting and just used the native implementation with their own interface. After Quantum and Electrolysis, Firefox was a lot more locked down and addons couldn't do stuff like this on their own. There was a previous thread a few days ago where a bunch of us were confused because we had these enabled and didn't remember enabling it, and some replies suggested the addons flipped the about:config setting.

Edit: I just found my old comment in this post, the old post I was referring to is this one. It's been resurfaced from 3 days ago.

What's also interesting is Tor Browser could probably take full advantage of containers later on, but I'm not sure if they would come up with a specific way of using it or just disable it.

Great question.

As a very satisfied, long time user of 2 extensions in combination, Temporary Containers and Firefox Multi-Account Containers, I wonder the same thing.

I found out the hard way some time back that simply disabling (not even removing it) and re-enabling the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension would cause all the painstakingly set up containers and their saved credentials/data to get "lost".

If there were to be a way to "export" and "import" sets of named containers with their settings and data, that would be great for not losing which-site-maps-to-which-container-and-is-already-signed-in (whether natively or within an extension).

This is (or was, before I switched to Vivaldi) the killer feature of Firefox containers for me. I could banish certain tracking-heavy sites to their own containers so that they could only track where I've been on their own properties and not across the whole web. (Without having to remember to switch to their containers beforehand.) So I guess if I go back to Firefox, I'll still have to use the extension.

And maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought that containers did more than just separate the cookie jars? I really like using Vivaldi/Chrome's separate profiles because then I can have separate extensions/settings/polices/etc for each one. Some sites don't get along with certain extensions.

MAC + Temporary Containers extension is how web browsing should be handled by default imo

No website deserves permanence of any data in my browser unless I so choose

I haven't seen similar functionality in any of the new generation of browsers, nor any of the Firefox spinoffs as-yet

(I avoid FB like the plague but may need to use it for some biz uses where they effectively host too large a share of the intended market)

Profiles form very different windows. You can decorate them to make them obvious at a glance which Profile is which. Up until recent Profile improvements, switching between them and managing them used to be a lot of work, including managing which one was the default for links from other applications.

Containers are tabs in a shared window. They get marked with a subtle color bar (the colors you choose for each container) and that's mostly it, they otherwise "blend in" to the same shared window. Reopening tabs in a different container is easy. Opening new tabs in a different container is easy. Containers share a few more things than Profiles do (but are still isolated in important ways such as cookies).

I have every site that needs my Google account pinned to always open in a specific container. The boundary is hard where I need it (the privacy protections) but soft for make workflows easier. If I find a YouTube embed in the wild somewhere that needs a login for one of the many restrictive reasons some do, I just click the normal link (or middle click for new tab) and YouTube opens in my Google container automatically. I don't need to copy paste between windows (or use Sync's sometimes slow tab sync engine). If I accidental hit a "log in with Google" button it opens up in the Google container and I know something is wrong because I don't expect random other websites in that container. (Relatedly, I finally installed uBlock Origin not to get rid of ads, but solely to get rid of that awful annoying content-obscuring popup for Google login on sites like Medium. I feel like there should be far more backlash on Google for being a bad actor doing that.)

I also use Profiles for alternate identities, things where a very different looking window are helpful to know I'm in the right place. Containers and Profiles are useful together.

i don't get the login with google problem. you would be logged in in one container and not in any of the others. unless you open a site in your "google container", nothing will happen. the container where you log in to google should automatically stay logged in anyways (i am not sure, i don't use google login, but it works like that for many other logins, hackernews for example) so you should never be tempted to hit that login with google button. the separate process only helps you if you save the google password in the browser. if you are like me and don't store passwords in the browser then the containers have the advantage that it is easier to check if you are in the right container instead of making sure you are in the right profile, unless you use themes to differentiate your profiles.

Also I would like each Firefox profile running instance to have its own icon at OS (desktop) level (Ubuntu, Windows) to ease switching.

So FB gets a different container. Google accounts get a container each. When I need to log in with Google - use the Google account's container.

Work gets different ones - depending on nature of work.

That makes it easy to manage containers for me.

In theory that account's data tracking to an extent is limited. But with browser fingerprinting I doubt this whole set up is very useful once you start aggregating data from multiple providers.

I have a container for finances, a container for shopping, a container for untrusted, etc... I can't imagine restarting Firefox every time I wanted to transition between those.

I'm still waiting for them to add a UI option to enable the `privacy.resistFingerprinting` setting.

> We’ve heard your feedback and understood the value you find in that separation. Now, we’re bringing the power of the Multi-Account Containers extension directly into the heart of Firefox for all to benefit from.

They are much more lightweight, and the workflow is better, just switch tabs.

They enable it by default without having to go to about:config or install an extension that use the container capabilities.

You have probably done one or the other a long time ago without remembering it.

Serious answer:

> For almost a decade, many of you have relied on our Multi-Account Containers extension to keep work, personal, and privacy-sensitive browsing separate without needing multiple browsers or profiles.

> We’ve heard your feedback and understood the value you find in that separation. Now, we’re bringing the power of the Multi-Account Containers extension directly into the heart of Firefox for all to benefit from.

I'm confused too, maybe it's preinstalled, but disabled?

I remember seeing this Fb container symbol in a tab from time to time in my private machine, but I think I did enable something in advance.

Or it's that I just see it extremely rarely due to uBlock origin.

"Not all of the features of the add-on are available in the first-party version of containers just yet, we’re still building them out."

the migration is not complete yet. i expect that eventually the extension will be made redundant.