Firefox Multi-Account Containers
addons.mozilla.org
addons.mozilla.org
In addition, I use the temporary container add-on[0] which also uses containers, but throws them away after being used (like reference counting).
These two tools have seriously improved my ability to both develop and test applications without the hassle of logging out and logging in all the time or needing any tricks when needing multiple clean browsing sessions.
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
* Work/personal separation
* Multiple AWS accounts
Also, I am very impressed with how well they're integrated into Firefox. For example, opening a link in a new tab will preserve the container. CMD+Shift+T will restore a recently closed tab and remember its original container. I really like the color coding too.
* Work/Personal * Multiple AWS Accounts * Bank * Facebook (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/facebookcontainer/) * Shopping * temp (test, disposable )
The only time I use private windows is when there is a glitch.
Sign-in to personal (while at work) to sync bookmarks if firewall allows. Depending on whether you trust your employer you could sync further personal settings.
Don't sign-in to work profile and no work bookmarks or settings/logins get shared.
Don't get me wrong: multi-account containers are a blessing for those rare days when you absolutely have to log-in to facebook.
privacy.userContext.enabled to true
privacy.userContext.ui.enabled to true
privacy.userContext.longPressBehavior to 2
I love using containers with privacy.firstparty.isolate set to true too for extra protection.
I never understand why Mozilla doesn't allow to enable this in the settings.
Of course you've always been able to setup multiple profiles for FF, but that is setup that I was usually too lazy for given it could be done ad-hoc in IE.
I have it configured such that middle-click opens links in new containers, and left-click opens in the current container.
Hide the popups with uBlock Origin. You pick the element with an inspector like tool and they are gone forever. Also use Cookie Autodelete to remove any information they attach to your browser.
If you really care about a site, make your choices in the cookie popup and grey/white list it in Cookie Autodelete.
I'm using a plugin called Cookie Autodelete for this and like it
Is the only different between this containers vs profile the container is tab base vs profile will be different windows?
The way my main FF browser is set up, I have multiple privacy enhancing extensions (including uMatrix), highly modified config, tightening of privacy preferences, WebRTC off, service workers disabled, telemetry disabled, etc and etc... This can create some problems on sites that pour hundreds of millions into tracking, data-collection.
So I have additional profiles that are Amazon-specific, Google-specific. If I facebook'd, I'd have a profile for them too. Each of these domain-based profiles are far more liberal (minimal extensions and such; fewer config tweaks). I even have a profile that's 100% Private Mode (ie, history, cookies... deleted after shutdown) with it's own set of config tweaks and extensions.
I use my privacy-enhanced default FF for most sites w/o issues. I wanted Google and Amazon completely separate while providing them more access to my browser (so that I could enjoy the full web experience without worry that a browser issue would make it easy for them to steal my entire browser usage). So they're free to rummage around, read cookies, access APIs - but they're only getting their own stuff back.
I feel profiles provide a better defense (all settings, cookies, storage in their own subDirectory) and much more flexibility than containers.
I don't bother with profiles any more, especially since there's a one click option to open all the container tabs in a new window as well.
The huge downside with them is they don't sync across devices. If/When this comes they will be perfect.
Putting in the effort to get them all set up nicely and then having them either blown away (I think this happened once...) or needing to get that over to another computer has made me limit my use to fewer containers than I probably would otherwise use.
Bugs like that would be forgivable if they'd at least provide a way to export/import setups.
Without that, its useless to me. There is a bugzilla [0] for it, and 3 years ago, it was said they were going to look more into it, and nothing really since.. Its frustrating.
We're actually pretty deep into the work of adding sync to M-A-C. https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/pull/161...
Predictably, synchronizing data is complicated, so it's taking a while and we're trying to do it in a way that doesn't destroy any existing data. So we'll be doing some heavy internal testing on it before we release it.
But it's definitely coming.
My only complaint (and really this is my biggest gripe with Firefox in general) is that there is no support for syncing containers using your Firefox account. This means every time I set up a new computer I have to reconfigure my containers and for each computer I have to re-associate all the sites I have sandbox with their own containers. This is such a huge pain.
Other than that, I love it.
I don't know how the Firefox account works but the fact that FMAC is an extension and not natively included in Firefox may be explaining why it's not synced ?
The profile manager (about:profiles) comes so close, but it's just not as elegant as Chrome. Starting Firefox with the profile manager also causes issues when the OS tries to open another Firefox instance.
They have a Firefox sync profile badge now. Just give me the option in that menu to open a new Firefox instance with another profile. And when the OS tries to open a webpage, just use the default profile - or even whatever profile I opened a page with last.
Chrome made profiles a first class citizen and they're an absolute pleasure to use. I literally use them every day. Firefox having a bunch of buried half baked UI isn't really an answer to that.
I believe Firefox is a better browser overall. Only this (profiles), the terrible bookmark/history experience (wtf is that?), and the developer bar are the remaining weaknesses.
To add on to what you're pointing out -- they even cloned Chrome's "profile-icon-in-the-bar" model, but didn't actually give you the ability to switch profiles with it! Instead more places to shove more links that I forgot about - Firefox Monitor and Firefox Send.
A comment in the bugzilla for this issue[1] seems to suggest that they'd like to rewrite History at the very least. So it's on the priority list somewhere.
There is definitely something profoundly broken with how history is being handled. Probably more than one thing that's broken, from the sounds of it.
The rationale is that you rarely want pages that you open from random Facebook posts or Reddit submissions, or pages that you arrive at by following more links from those, to have access to your Facebook or Reddit login information.
The annoying thing about your extension is that the end-user would need to know about and update the domains they want to keep isolated. It would be great if all these extensions/features were built into the original extension and there were updating isolation lists similar to the uBlock Origin lists (EasyList, Peter Lowe's list, etc.).
Thank you.
What I want is something more like "jail site X in container X, and open every non-X link in a temporary container / container Y / whatever."
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
Specified sites can still be opened in specific containers, and not be trashed.
Also, it didn't work on mobile.
See https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...
Without a built-in sync feature, I continue to use the simplest form of cookie management: Private Windows.
I know there's been some discussion on sync: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3....
As of Dec 2019, it looks like some traction will be coming to syncing just Containers and Site Assignments (which I believe would perfectly suffice most basic needs).
If anyone really wanted to keep an eye on sync, I'm guessing these features will be committed to their syncserver, when available: https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver.
> With #1537, our next release starts to address container-bookmark integration & UX. As @MichaelTunnell points out, it does not solve ALL of the container-bookmark UX requests in this issue, or in #854 #1142 and #1443.
> Container-bookmark UX is a big project, and some of the solutions will require changes in Firefox itself. Any changes here could introduce tricky bugs both in technical integration and in UX flows.
In the meantime, I have been using a hacky work-around that more or less does the core thing that I want: quickly open up a specific bookmark in a specific container. (Actually adding it into the bookmarks and syncing across devices is a pain, but not as painful as not being able to open up bookmarks into specific containers).
The UX that container tabs have - being able to use them in the same Windows as other tabs, with accessible open-in options from the tab bar and from various context menus; creating new containers as easily as specifying a name and no more - is the UX that I wish Firefox had for their profiles.
I am very excited about this feature and have tried to incorporate it into my workflow but find it very difficult.
I want to open a window (not tab) as a particular profile, and then all subsequent tabs in that window are of that same profile.
This would seem to be the basic, beginning use-case from which all other use-cases would follow. I don't know why it doesn't exist ...
I would never ever want to do that. So, no, it is not the basic, beginning use-case. It is a worthless use case for me. You shouldn't assume that your use cases are the obvious ones.
As far as I can tell, the only way to open a specific container tab is to mousey-mouse-mouse to:
File > New Container Tab > Blah
Of course that use-case should be preserved, but it's woefully inefficient ... if you have a profile you do a lot of things under, you'd create a window and then (keystroke) (CMD)-t to get a new tab ...
So, you don't need to down-arrow and pick, you can just:
ctrl + . (ctrl + period)
then hit '1' or '2' ...
I type in a URL and Firefox knows which container to open it in already.
I've been using Firefox with containers since it came out and I've never wanted to do that.
Once its launched its pretty much like running to separate firefox instances in your system with separate bookmarks, histories, settings, addons - like in Chrome. So it is a lot more heavier than containers as a result. Which is why i think the 2 functionalities shouldn't me unified like people in the comments seem to be asking. Similar to Threads vs processes. We need both.
That's the best I've been able to do so far.
Available for Android and iOS.
What you can do is have a certain site auto open in a specific container, that way you can just go to the site from a bookmark, link, the address bar etc and it is just one step, but this breaks when you have more than one account on the same site and want a container for each.
If anyone does know a workaround for this, or knows if there's a fix coming, would be really interested to hear!
A couple of caveats, though:
* If you disable Multi-Account Containers at ANY TIME, all of your configuration will be gone. So, don't ever disable it. Or just be prepared.
* They don't sync with Firefox Sync.
* I use Alfred and in some of my workflows, when I have URLs that are designed to always open in a particular container, FF just won't open the URL. /shrug
* Always opening URLs depends on the URL. This works great for apps which give you account-specific URLs (e.g. Harvest, Jira, other services...) but doesn't work at all for stuff like Gmail or Drive. I wish there was a way to get FF to ask you how you want to open a URL like that.
1. I'm horrified using Chrome these days. Browsing to a random site and having my Google account avatar pop up and offer to log me in is really unacceptable. So I fundamentally love what MAC provides. (Though some of this is also Firefox's aggressive cookie options.)
2. It's ridiculously buggy. "Reopen in Container Tab" often reloads in the exact same container. Trust me, I've checked the various bits of configuration that control defaulting certain domains to certain containers, there are just times that it does the wrong thing.
3. The config is hard to backup? I gave up last time I tried. It's a lot of work to get all of the domains setup to open in certain containers, establish the naming/coloring conventions so that it's not a mental burden.... and then have to lose it when I'm inevitably told that somehow Linux performance will be magically better if I make a new profile.
Example usages: multiple "personas". I have a Google Suite account and domain for certain things. I don't have issues switching between Google accounts because to Google, I'm only ever logged into one at a time. Dev/Test purposes.
I know supercookies and other fingerprinting means I am probably being tracked still, but at least I am minimising it without going full time incognito.
Previously I was using Profiles to separate personal, work and clients, and though about:profiles help switching quicker it was still messy, and confusing which profile a link would open in etc.
Now I can separate Facebook, Google products and Amazon into their own containers. I can keep various client browsing separate from my personal, I can keep more suspect websites in its own container, finance, infrastructure etc. Love it.
* [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/facebook-cont...
The issue is when you've an app that needs Google authentication and it opens the browser. To be more specific, I was trying to log in on Postman using the web authentication option. It opened my default browser (Firefox) just fine but it opened my other container (Work) which is not associated with my Google login. When i asked it to re-open the page in the other container (Personal), it lost all the redirect information and wouldn't let me continue back to Postman. I swear I had this same issue with another app but can't recall its name.
I suppose i could workaround this issue by having my personal container handle all the postman links but it seems like too many steps to get one thing.
Banking - all finance related stuff
facebook
twitter
amazon - Amazon + AWS + Zappos
Google - google, gmail, mapsOne profile is for logging into various services I regularly use, one is dedicated to day-to-day surfing, one is for local development (there are no addons in this one), one is specifically for webmail, and one is specifically for Trello. Containers are most useful with the first two profiles...especially the first, so that the various services have some level of isolation.
EDIT: details, typos, etc
(Or in multiple accounts/logins of Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Outlook, etc...)
I might add separate containers for separate Twitter accounts, because the multiple account UI on Twitter's web site is atrocious, IMO. I'm constantly "in the wrong account".
At work I set up a container for all the domains and servers my company uses versus everything else.
I also use the Temporary Containers extension for added privacy, though it's... still pretty rough around the edges, particularly when dealing with sites that use SSO (since kicking out to an OAuth provider causes a new temporary container to be opened, which then messes up the auth flow).
Unfortunately at work we are using a lot of OAuth, so I am supposed to use AWS and others with Google authentication. Which means that I cannot isolate them anymore. At the moment I still use my old AWS IAM account, but the plan is to remove the credentials. On other services I have never had any separate credentials :(
My key use of this is to manage multiple login sessions to the same site. Having a bunch of spare containers lets me do this in the same browser window. And I don't have to worry about closing them (compared to using private browsing)
This is like incognito mode on a container level.
You can't get anywhere near this with Chrome as far as I'm aware.
The simplicity of these Containers really amazes me.
That's what I've always done when I don't want to use multiple accounts on the machine itself.
[0]https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...
I think I can't isolate Google search to ours own container.
I'm also using strict setting and cookies are cleared when Firefox is closed, and Gmail and accounts domain are white listed.
The UI of this addon could be a little better.
Multi-Account Containers completely fixed this for me.
If you want the containers to stick around you can avoid /dev/shm and keep the dirs around instead.
If You want a sidebar with tabs grouped by containers, I developed an addon for it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-tab...
I recently changed to using Firefox on Android and it seems some extensions like this one are not compatible which is a real shame.
I wish that this was compatible with Firefox mobile
Any want to automatically regenerate fingerprinting randomness?
Sites please enable 2FA and not require Captchas!
IMO containers and profile functionalities shouldn't be mixed. Containers are a lightweight version of Profiles. Running 2 profiles is essentially running 2 separate browsers running with separate histories, add-ons, bookmarks, settings. A bit like threads vs processes.
If you want that, use profiles.
>too many clicks to open a new tab in a container
The configuration for this is really simple. There's even extensions like "temporary container tab" that will give you a fresh container with one click.
I guess I am not smart enough to figure out the simple configuration you mention.