Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

Does Brave have an implementation of Multi-Account Containers? This is the ONE killer feature in Firefox that makes it impossible for me to leave for Brave completely:

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

View on HN

For me, somewhat embarrassingly, the one killer feature is the "Send to Device" feature from firefox on iOS. Being able to send links to browser for later reviewing is super useful. Not sure why Edge or other browsers don't implement

This is a killer feature for me too. Works great between all my devices across Linux, Android, and iOS. If I see an interesting article I just ship it off to my desktop to read later instead of keeping the tab open for days on my phone.

I've unfortunately had the opposite experience with FF send, I still use it all the time (or try to) when I find links on mobile that I want to read on a big screen, or when I have an image url on my laptop that I want to send from my phone via SMS, snapshat, etc. But the delay is just unbearably long and inconsistent. Sometimes (most often when sending desktop to phone) the delay is 15 minutes or more. I've found it a lot easier to use a bookmarklet that uses DDG to generate qr codes, but that only solved sharing in one direction.

I've wondered how send could be so slow but maybe something in my setup is just killing it. More than anything though, I would love an easy way to access my phone's sharing options from my laptop (perhaps an addon button that shows a list of app intents that can receive a url/page).

This is one thing I'm hoping to hack at when I get my Librem.

I'm on Android. I use an app called Pushbullet, which mirrors notifications but also enables text and file sharing between all your devices. Sharing is instant. I also enable "open immediately on browser", meaning if I send a link from my phone to my computer browser then it'll automatically open a new tab with that link. It's pretty neat, it's really two or three taps away from any web browser tab on my mobile (open menu, hit Pushbullet shortcut; or open menu, open sharing menu, push to all devices).

I used PushBullet once and send a pornhub link to all my devices which auto played. When I say Autoplayed I mean it started to play on my work machine and I was working from home.

Never rode my bicycle quicker (public transport sucked). Fortunately my computer was on mute but still had to confess to watching certain content on a work machine to my boss. Nothing came of it but all the same.

Be careful. I even posted on r/TIFU at the time.

You might want to look into KDE Connect.

I use the "send tab to another device" feature a lot, and it's true that sometimes it isn't fast enough to be considered real-time. Sometimes tabs appear instantly, sometimes they don't appear for minutes, and sometimes restarting the browser triggers tab reception. In any case, it's already an awesome feature.

Have you tried KDE connect?

You can share links and files with any connected device. Use it as a remote control for music players and presentations. Ring your phone from your computer to find it and more.

https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

(edit: add second paragraph and link)

I love KDE connect. It makes smartphone interaction really seamless. However, it only works in the same wifi (most likely some wifi you control).

PS: Just noticed there is a VPN feature https://userbase.kde.org/KDEConnect#Running_KDE_Connect_over... -- KDEconnect is really amazing.

I use getpocket for saving links to read, which is cross platform, including the web.

I usually just message myself on WhatsApp.

I also remember a popular extension that could do this, PushBullets

I just send things to myself on Telegram...works fine.

If you’re on iOS you already have native universal hand-off in Safari, works in both directions.

Even if it’s off, you can see all your other device’s tabs at the bottom of the mobile safari tab switcher.

Maybe they use Windows or Linux.

Chrome's "Recent Tabs" works like this across platforms. It is a feature I miss in Firefox.

They have both recently put existing tabs in the omnibox suggestions, which is a huge quality of life improvement.

Firefox calls it synced tabs.

Chrome has had this for a few months. You're talking about right click browser bar and "send to my devices," right? Works for me from Chrome on linux and windows to android.

Thanks, just tried this now

When you add MS Phone Companion/Link to Windows on Android you can "Send to PC" which will either load the tab in Edge (newest Edge based on Chromium), or create a notification in action center based on your choice.

Works great, though I needed to whitelist some domains on PiHole for it to function.

this is in chrome?

Not a 1-to-1 parity at this time, but Brave offers parallel profiles. You can have one running personal interests, while the other has professional interests. Each profile is able to host a unique session for Facebook, etc. Brave already prohibits cookie and data bleed-over from one domain to another.

That creates a new window per Profile as opposed to just one window with a bunch of tabs, all conceivably in using their own Container, right?

How do you juggle multiple facebook / google / anything accounts in that sort of system?

Each container can be colour coded (up to 8 colours) and each tab is underscored with the same colour, so you can immediately see which is which.

The containers can be named and color coded. Also there are keyboard shortcuts which once learned makes it easier to switch.

> Brave already prohibits cookie and data bleed-over from one domain to another.

Is that similar to First Party Isolation in Firefox?

I suspect so, but don't know the details of FPI in Firefox. We don't permit cookies and storage access by third-parties, while also blocking known bad-actors entirely. We also "farble" APIs to create noise for those who do have access. If there are any specific scenarios or questions you have in mind, I'd be happy to discuss further.

Would Brave's parallel profiles allow me to be signed in to 2 different AWS accounts?

I've tried this in Multi-Account Containers for Firefox and SessionBox in Chrome, and they're both pretty buggy, e.g. the console's username menu indicates I'm in account "A", but I'm seeing resources listed from account "B", or EC2 will work fine but clicking over to ECS prompt me to sign in again.

Correct; your AWS session would be scoped to your profile. You could be using your own personal account in the "Personal" profile, and your professional/corporate account in your "Work" profile.

I use Firefox containers to be logged into 3 AWS accounts and works fine for me.

> We also "farble" APIs to create noise for those who do have access

Does this effectively do the same as the 'Canvasblocker' extension does for Firefox?

Maybe; I'm not super familiar with Canvas Blocker. One thing you have to be careful with when blocking APIs is that you don't generate a negative fingerprint by your restrictions, which is every bit as effective as a positive fingerprint would be. Our farbling is pretty good, and will be getting even better later this month :)

Despite its name, Canvasblocker actually does that, it sends slightly shifted API data, not only for canvas but for most fingerprinting methods.

Nonetheless I'm happy to hear about the improvements in Brave. I've actually shifted from Firefox to Brave since I'm expecting Webkit/Blink to become a 'Linux kernel' for web technologies and thus the web.

Keep up the great work! The only true remaining nitpicks I still have with Brave (after the introduction of Sync V2) are

1. iOS Brave being based on Firefox instead of Chrome iOS (I am aware of the technical cost of switching codebase)

2. Prevent browser close on last tab close

If those two existed Brave would be perfect for me.

I don't think it's the same. There is a list of things that Firefox isolates per-domain here [1], it's much more than cookies. There is a Brave ticket here but not much has happened: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/1053

[1] https://2019.www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#...

The first time I actually leant how to use this I was like wow.

It was the only reason why I left chrome for firefox

Chrome got it a couple months back fyi

Really? How do you enable it?

I'm not terribly familiar with all the features that Multi-Account Containers offer. Does SessionBox for Chrome not meet your needs for some specific reason?

There is an extension for everything, that’s not the point. Firefox ships it as standard and supports it as such.

Forgive my ignorance, but I think the thing OP linked is also an addon?

It’s an addon from Mozilla itself that just surfaces a bit of UI for advanced controls. The actual feature is already baked in the browser, they’ve just been very conservative about exposing it to everyone.

You are not wrong. However it's a first-party extension, as in it's from Mozilla.

Debatable how significant that is as a difference.

Firefox has the containerization built in. You can use it without the extension but with worst UX.

> For advanced users: You can also enable Containers without the Multi-Account Containers extension, by changing some preferences in the Configuration Editor (about:config page). Note that you will get a better user experience by installing the extension but, if you choose not to, you can set privacy.userContext.enabled to true, privacy.userContext.ui.enabled to true and privacy.userContext.longPressBehavior to 2 in about:config.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers

There's a similar thing shipped in Chrome now called Tab Groups, you just have to enable it behind chrome://flags.

In my view it's nowhere near as nice as it is on Firefox, with site isolation (Facebook, Google, Twitter, reddit), temporary containers, and a myriad of other add-ons that improve managing them (keyboard shortcuts and transition rules are the two I use the most).

tab groups are not equivalent to containers.

its more like Vivaldi's tab stacks or FF's Tree Tabs. With groups there are no inherent additional security mechanisms in place to prevent cross-group contamination/access. i.e., two different tab groups can access the same site data.

containers however are completely isolated from each other. i.e., two different containers have completely different sets of site data.

> no inherent additional security mechanisms in place to prevent cross-group contamination/access

Are you saying the biggest advertiser on the planet likely doesn't want to add functionality that could potentially hinder tracking for advertising purposes...?

I am shocked, shocked and appalled. /s

Seems close, but doesn't give me temporary containers like the Firefox add-on with that name.

Ironically the only time I wanted to use this feature was to separate my accounts related to my project and browser extension.

Except that the mozilla 's site does not care about your privacy. Whether you use containers or not, they automatically get your identity from the browser, and then you cannot just be logged out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com