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Comment by philshem | Hacker News Reader

For those new and old to Firefox, check out the new-ish privacy feature “multi-account containers”

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

I use it not for privacy but for multiple logins with a service that doesn't support it, such as AWS. Even with Google, I find it easier to find the right account's Calendar (work vs private) if the tab handle is colour marked.

It's not perfect but it beats "private browsing" windows which I used before.

OMG How have I not been using them for multiple AWS accounts for like ever! Thank you for your comment. Sometimes these "i use X for Y" comments are the best!

Damn, this didn't occur to me and I use them for privacy all the time. Thank you, this will make debugging much easier, as I frequently need one "logged in" tab and one "logged out".

I use that extensively. On top of it, I use Temporary Containers [0] and pretty much run each tab on its own temp container to further reduce tracking.

For stuff that I want sessions to survive, I open them in specific multi-account containers.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

Hmm, I've been using a combination of multi-account containers and Cookie AutoDelete [0]. I'm going to try temporary containers out - it should have a broader protection coverage than just deleting cookies.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

This is awsome for web development too! You can have two tabs open to test out sending messages to eachother, you can have an admin and regular session open simultaneously. So usefull!

Firefox Dev Edition with Multi-Account containers is my GOTO web frontend dev browser.

This extension is super useful for that, it lets you instantly create new temporary containers: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

Yup - I LOVE temporary containers. I feel so cripple when developing outside of Firefox now.

I like the idea of multi-account containers, but I'm very used to Chrome's way of having separate profiles.

With MAC you get tabs for different containers mixed up in the same window and the URL history is shared.

I prefer the profiles approach where everything - extensions, history, etc. - is all nicely segregated.

Firefox does have profiles, but there's still no good UI for managing them.

I am using Firefox with profiles for years (maybe even decade). Run Firefox from command line with -P flag to start profile manager or -p <profile> to run particular profile. Rest is matter of shortcut/custom icons to launch.

I was going to say this. Also I havent used FF profiles in a minute but the dialog that lets you select a profile has a checkbox to auto select that profile or something. If you unselect that it should always prompt you about profile. I wish Firefox would make this UI as easy as it is in Chrome. I refuse to login on Chrome to Google.

I have a bookmark to "about:profiles" on my main toolbar (not my bookmark toolbar, I hide that) in Firefox to launch my Work profile and Personal profile. I never use the commandline "-P" option.

My Work profile has a few key bookmarks and extensions in it, but history and cache are never saved and is not linked to a Sync account.

Proving my point that there's no _good_ UI for managing profiles with Firefox. And no, about:profiles doesn't count. Chrome makes it nice and easy and obvious.

Thanks for sharing this addon! It is exactly what I need to test a website I am working on and I need to be connected with 3 different accounts at the same time. Bye bye, "private window" of multiple browsers.

Unfortunately NoScript is not able to allow/deny selectively for containers.

I block all Facebook domains with NoScript so I cant really use facebook in a container.

You might be interested in Facebook Container by Mozilla[1] then, as an alternative to your NoScript rules.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...

Thanks already using it, but this doesn't give me confindence, that all Facebook traffic on all other sites is blocked.

Its primary purpose was for blocking Facebook on other sites as you browse the web.

uMatrix is good for that. You can default block facebook scripts/cookies/etc. everywhere, but on facebook allow them. It's how I block google everywhere except when I'm logging into gmail.

I guess in this case the easiest would be a separate browser for Facebook.

That is what I was doing for that past few years: Opera for Facebook... but Opera is a no go these days because of ownership changes and it would be great to not keep multiple browsers open for simple tasks.

There are others: Midori, Vivaldi, if on Linux there is Epiphany. There are plenty of Firefox based forks too.

Thanks for recommending this! I knew about it, but quite a few of the responses have showed me new and clever ways to use it. I love the idea of using it during web development for logged in vs logged out state, for example.

Is it possible to have a different vpn for each container?

aren't VPNs across the entire network connection? (so not specific to the browser)

No idea. Maybe the term I'm looking for is proxy? I'm just looking to gamble using multiple ID's without the sites easily seeing that they're all me.

There are some browser extension VPNs. So they are specific to the browser.

Or maybe don't... I relied too much on it, and lost quite some data. Too bad it had no sync capabilities, or even basic import/export for backing up.

What type of data did you loose ? The addon seems to isolate cookies and storage by container

Yes... I had sessions in those containers, the cookies are the data I guess.

Can you explain? It’s a puzzling comment about containers

I've had problems where it loses my settings after update. They also don't sync between devices, making them quite cumbersome for me to use (you can copy the settings manually though).

When it's all setup it works great though.

>They also don't sync between devices

I would second this, it took me a while to troubleshoot this problem. If you don't use Sync, then it might be irrelevant.

I also use Tab Suspender to reduce the footprint, the 'suspended' tabs also intermittently fail to sync.

Github: https://github.com/Hau-Hau/firefox-tab-suspender

My "data loss" happened when Firefox updated itself automatically, said add-on was not compatible with latest Firefox and was disabled. After some time it became compatible again and was reenabled. All cookies in "containers" were lost.

Not sure anything else was lost though.

Anyway, password manager is still on a global (not per container/account), so it's easy to make mistakes and log in with "credentials A" in "container B". Or am I missing something?

There was/is a button that allowed you to clear your default container's entire session. I almost clicked that.

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