For me the big use case is having different Google accounts active in one window. Work and private. And when I was doing freelance projects, I sometimes had 3 or 4 different Google accounts active. Plus assorted stuff tied to those accounts. Using different colors for each makes it easy to tell apart the tabs.
Another use case is if you are testing the same app for different customers with different credentials. I do this a lot and I have dedicated containers for each customer so I can easily switch with out having to log out and in a lot.
And of course some companies that can't be trusted with cookies, like Facebook, get isolated. I open that container less and less these days. But I still check every few months. I also keep my bank's website in its own container just on principle.
(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)
I never understood why it was set off to the side in an (official, first-party) extension, because I was always afraid they would one day stop supporting it. Now when I explain to people why I prefer Firefox, I don't have to explain "There's this extension, don't worry it's official, that allows me to..." I can just say "It has containers built-in. They're great. Try them."
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 only wish it was more automated. Every site should automatically get its own container.
How much of the anti-tracking value is defeated by non-cookie browser fingerprinting?
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.
Am I wrong? Was it unofficial? A hack?
> 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 just created a new profile in Firefox 140 ESR, started it in safe mode (which disables extensions), enabled "privacy.userContext.enabled" in about:config - and there you go, native containers accessible from File -> New Container Tab.
I'm not talking about the Multi-Account Containers extension. There are no extensions installed or enabled. It comes with Firefox 140 ESR, without extensions.
The Containers feature is already a "native, first-party feature" in older versions of Firefox. Firefox already has a "first-party version of containers". They have already brought it "directly into the heart of Firefox for all to benefit".
What are they talking about? Are they simply flipping the config setting to true by default? Are they replacing the existing "Containers" feature with a new feature which is also called "Containers"? Are they rebranding the Multi-Account Containers extension as "Containers" and making it built-in (seemingly not, since apparently "Not all of the features of the add-on are available in the first-party version of containers").
I'm thinking they will change the containers preference to default to on, and if the extension enabled the preference before maybe that's being removed. Otherwise the containers functionality in Firefox or the extensions in the extensions remain exactly as they were before.
So you still need the extension as it has the critical functionality of Ctrl-Shift-1 to open a new tab of the first container type.
Syncing across device and always reopening a certain site/domain inside a specific container are must-have features, so I think I'll keep using the extension until they are available natively.
Also the “temporary container” extension is quite useful and closer to what I need in the first place.
I hope it is, since it was a major pain point before.
So what is it that they're adding?
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.
For a long time, with relatively limited (compared to Google and Apple) development resources, they focused on minimizing upkeep and technical debt. They added and maintained features appealing to the vast majority, the non-technical users, and left the rest to extensions.
Now I'm seeing geek and power user favorites like a built-in color picker, PDF editing features, and now multi-account containers moved into the browser. What changed? Are they focusing on different audience? Do they have new resources so that they can afford maintaining all these additional, more niche features?
- Forcing container usage/default window popup for assigning sites to containers
- Viewing a list of websites assigned per container
Mozilla notes that the extension still adds some functionality:
> “Installing the Multi-Account Containers extension developed by Mozilla provides a few benefits on top of the native container functionality like site-specific container assignments, syncing across devices, and integration with Mozilla VPN or your own proxy.”[2]
I don’t currently need any of those additional features, so the native version would probably be enough for me. What I haven’t been able to figure out is how to switch without losing my existing setup. 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?
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-use-firefox-contain...
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).
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.
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.