[HN Gopher] Guide to Firefox Containers (2018)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Guide to Firefox Containers (2018)
        
       Author : cassepipe
       Score  : 210 points
       Date   : 2021-08-30 09:01 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.thechiefmeat.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.thechiefmeat.com)
        
       | thanksforfish wrote:
       | One of the unexpected benefits for me has been that I can lock
       | any OAuth enabled app to a container for the OAuth provider I
       | use. To login, I check which container I'm in and click the
       | associated button.
       | 
       | Before this I'd always forget which OAuth provider I previously
       | used. Did I Login with Google to DigitalOcean or did I use
       | GitHub? Worse, I'd often click the wrong button and get logged
       | into a new/empty account. I never came up with a good rule for
       | which OAuth provider I should use, so it's a guessing game.
       | 
       | Locking the app to the container means I don't really need to
       | think.
        
       | freediver wrote:
       | Do any Safari users miss containers and why?
       | 
       | It looks like tabs in private window (which are isolated in
       | Safari) fulfill the role of temporary containers almost
       | identically.
        
       | lf-non wrote:
       | Firefox containers are cool. I do wish though that they were
       | better integrated with the rest of the browser eg. bookmarks ,
       | history, downloads etc.
       | 
       | I am aware that I can configure it to open certain sites in
       | certain containers always, but that is not ideal in many cases
       | eg. using github/gmail for both work & personal use.
       | 
       | I currently use an extension [1] that enables support for opening
       | links in specific containers using custom protocol handler. So
       | now I can have a launch-gmail.sh script that invokes
       | 
       | firefox 'ext+container:name=Google&url=https://mail.google.com'
       | 
       | to open the site in a specific container.
       | 
       | [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-
       | in-c...
        
       | super_mario wrote:
       | Are containers still necessary? Does the Firefox built in privacy
       | (Strict privacy protection policy) provide same or similar
       | functionality?
        
         | d3nj4l wrote:
         | Those are for different things. I use containers to log in to
         | the same website with different accounts without having to
         | switch browsers or open a new window. E.g., since Discord still
         | doesn't support switching accounts in the year of our lord
         | 2021, I have a container set up for the discord account I use
         | for IRL stuff, and my personal account logged into the
         | "vanilla" container. I can keep both discord tabs open side by
         | side and get notifications from both.
         | 
         | Even for websites that allow switching accounts, I prefer to
         | use containers especially if the accounts go across different
         | "domains" of my life. If I _must_ log in to something personal
         | at work or vice versa, I generally use a container for that to
         | keep them separate.
        
         | flatiron wrote:
         | I wrote up a quick email to friends/family at the beginning of
         | the pandemic about Firefox containers in regards to the vaccine
         | signups that were occurring. Since there was site isolation you
         | could get as many "slots" as you were willing to solve capchas.
         | Most of my friends and family were vaccinated because of this
         | feature. A bunch say they use it now a days for normal site
         | isolation but I did at least convert some people off chrome
         | that way.
        
           | msdrigg wrote:
           | Very clever use case
        
         | msdrigg wrote:
         | I use containers to only use some google services while signed
         | in. For instance I use gmail signed in but I google search in a
         | separate container to not log that data in my account.
         | 
         | I may be fooling myself and google can identify it anyway
         | through my IP or something but it feels like I get a little
         | extra anonymity.
        
           | abacadaba wrote:
           | duckduckgo is a thing, just sayin
        
             | kashug wrote:
             | But the search is not as good. Or good might be subjective
             | in this case. But I tried using DDG mutliple times, but
             | every time I end up just doing the same search on google
             | becouse it is much better at giving me the result I want.
             | 
             | But this is just my personal experience.
        
             | msdrigg wrote:
             | I use ddg primarily, but I regularly need to use g! to
             | reroute myself to Google when searching for anything that I
             | don't already have domain-specific knowledge for.
             | 
             | Like if I want to just check syntax for a new programming
             | language, ddg can handle the search just fine, but if I am
             | doing initial research for a problem I don't understand
             | well, I need Google to get consistently relevant results.
        
         | wintermutestwin wrote:
         | Containers are necessary to provide account segmentation.
        
         | criddell wrote:
         | Earlier this year when PS5's were really hard to get, I used
         | Firefox Containers to help get one. One of the tracking
         | services would tweet that some retailer had them for sale. I
         | would use containers to open a dozen connections to the server.
         | A couple containers would get through and eventually I was able
         | to complete the purchase transaction.
         | 
         | It took about a week of trying and I was successful at Walmart
         | and BestBuy.
        
       | davidgerard wrote:
       | Containers are a killer feature for Firefox, like having
       | adblocking that works on mobile (unlike on Chrome).
       | 
       | Just need containers on the mobile version.
        
         | wintermutestwin wrote:
         | >having adblocking that works on mobile
         | 
         | I thought you couldn't install adblock addons (uBlock Matrix)
         | on mobile Firefox?
        
         | commoner wrote:
         | There's a petition on ideas@mozilla for implementing containers
         | in the mobile version of Firefox, if you'd like to vote for it:
         | https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/721603
        
           | davidgerard wrote:
           | Trouble is it apparently requires a lot of reimplementation
           | deep in the guts of the mobile app; they do understand it's a
           | highly-desired feature.
        
       | UI_at_80x24 wrote:
       | One downside that I had hoped containers would fix was multiple
       | accounts on AWS.
       | 
       | Because of the way AWS handles the URL's for logging in I get:
       | company1.signin.aws.amazon.com
       | company2.signin.aws.amazon.com
       | company3.signin.aws.amazon.com
       | 
       | BUT FF only seems to remember the login/password for 1 of these
       | at a time. I had hoped that putting them all in different
       | containers would fix this but it appears that FF only matches
       | based on the base domain name, and not the full sub-domain. If
       | AWS had the domains structured as:
       | AWS.com/company1       AWS.com/company2       AWS.com/company3
       | 
       | It might behave differently.
        
         | warvair wrote:
         | I have the same issue, but I don't see the same thing.
         | 
         | I have bookmarks set up with URLs like your first set:
         | company1.sigin.aws.amazon.com       ...
         | 
         | But as soon as I click one, it gets redirected to:
         | signin.aws.amazon.com/oauth?<War and Peace>
         | 
         | Which is interpreted as the same URL for all accounts.
         | 
         | One solution would be to have FF containers tie into the
         | bookmark editing code so we can set the container by bookmark.
         | That is, when I click a bookmark with a container set, that
         | container should be used to open the site regardless of the
         | URL.
        
         | mech422 wrote:
         | I use different profiles for that... basically, I have multiple
         | Firefox shortcuts, each using a different profile. You can also
         | use containers with the profile to segregate things even more.
        
           | anonymousab wrote:
           | I wish Firefox had better (chrome-level) support for
           | containers. There's various small QoL things that add up to
           | make them a much more usable feature.
           | 
           | At the very least, exposing them via webextension APIs would
           | let developers take care of it themselves.
        
             | commoner wrote:
             | While Firefox doesn't have WebExtension APIs for browser
             | profiles, the Profile Switcher for Firefox extension uses a
             | separately installed connector binary to add a profile
             | switcher (similar to Chrome's) in Firefox. See my other
             | comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356472
        
         | Link512 wrote:
         | Have you considered using a password manager? With 1Password
         | I'm able to save all logins for my AWS accounts and then just
         | select the appropriate one when logging in.
        
           | UI_at_80x24 wrote:
           | I use pass (password-store). I haven't added any firefox
           | plugin to manage that for me. So I always go back to the
           | terminal for copy/pasting the details.
        
             | seqizz wrote:
             | I could suggest browserpass. It should be clever enough, at
             | least with search.
        
           | sciurus wrote:
           | Same for me using LastPass.
        
         | stonewareslord wrote:
         | Sounds like Containerise can do that
        
       | detritus wrote:
       | Containers are great! But since the recent v.91 update screwed
       | the tabs up so much, there's no quick visual way to scan and see
       | which container-type each tab is.
       | 
       | Great stuff, well done Mozilla! What's the point in being able to
       | customise a container's appearance, including colour, if they're
       | not described on the tab itself?
        
         | thunderbong wrote:
         | I use 'Container Tabs Sidebar' [0] add-on which gives me a
         | tree-style view of the different pages opened in their
         | corresponding containers.
         | 
         | [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-
         | tab...
        
         | syshum wrote:
         | TreeStyleTabs...
         | 
         | next to Containers, it is the only reason I still use FF, if FF
         | drops support for either TreeStyleTabs or Containers there will
         | be zero reason for me to continue using it.
        
           | generalizations wrote:
           | Sideberry is TST with better perfomance, FYI.
           | 
           | Also, right there with ya - treed tabs is the only reason I
           | stick with FF.
        
             | BlackLotus89 wrote:
             | Better performance not necessarily, but you can set custom
             | rules for containers. You can set the user agent and proxy
             | settings on a container base which is nice
        
               | generalizations wrote:
               | Firefox used to freeze up periodically when I used TST,
               | and that went away when I switched. That's all I meant.
        
               | BlackLotus89 wrote:
               | Yup went away from TST for the same reason.
               | 
               | Made a performance comparison a few weeks ago to compare
               | sidebery with TST (I got a few thousand open tabs, spread
               | over ~50 windows) and didn't get the perfomance penalty I
               | used to.
               | 
               | Side note: some plugins "crashed" when testing TST,
               | sidebery and tab stash at the same time. Sidebery seemed
               | to be the most stable. (had at one time no adblock
               | anymore so that's something)
               | 
               | Side note 2: I really like some things about sidebery for
               | instance the grouping of tabs and the possibility to see
               | your bookmarks. TST needs to be extended through plugins
               | for this, but some functionality is really only available
               | in certain plugins.
               | 
               | Side note 3: The tab handling of sidebery and TST feels
               | quite different... If you are used to the normal tab
               | handling you will be confused with sidebery... a lot (you
               | can reconfigure it to be more vanilla, but I had multiple
               | problems configuring the plugins). The tab switching
               | isn't at all obvious at times.
               | 
               | All in all I would recommend everyone to play around with
               | containers and vertical tabs :) I know this little rant
               | here went on a huge tangent from the article, but I
               | wanted to clarify my experience with the named plugins.
        
             | eitland wrote:
             | For those interested in TST this bug might be worth
             | watching:
             | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447
             | 
             | There is also some activity on https://ideas.mozilla.org
             | and I think you can even vote there.
             | 
             | Edit, here is one idea already posted and approved for
             | voting: https://mozilla.crowdicity.com/post/721353
        
             | collinvandyck76 wrote:
             | How do I get over the reluctance to grant an extension to
             | "Access your data for all websites"? I would love to have
             | some of these extensions but it feels like a huge security
             | risk.
        
               | kbenson wrote:
               | If you _really_ want an extension that requires that, and
               | if it has a repo, you could vet the code a bit (it 's
               | JavaScript, so somewhat accessible), and load it as an
               | extension from a file after packaging it up.
               | 
               | Alternatively, you can install it, look in your profile
               | dir until you find that extension, and look through all
               | the code it's using, and turn off automatically update
               | extensions in Firefox when you're happy you want to keep
               | it.
               | 
               | People can say what they will about the great extension
               | convergence where Firefox switched to Chrome style
               | extensions, but having everything just be JavaScript that
               | you can easily review yourself is pretty nice.
        
               | input_sh wrote:
               | By reading the feature set and realising that some of
               | them cannot work without that permission. For example,
               | you can't have a password manager, a CSS style injector,
               | or an ad-blocker without that access.
               | 
               | After taking a quick look at the add-on from the comment
               | above, I bet it's the snapshots feature that requires it.
        
         | croutonwagon wrote:
         | i think tweaking browser.proton in about:config will break
         | this. Saw this on Reddit a while back when looking at why my
         | containers were bugged (for a totally different reason.
        
         | ohgodplsno wrote:
         | You might need to get your vision checked. Each tab in a
         | container gets a colored top border. And it's sizeable.
        
           | detritus wrote:
           | Your decision to be a dismissive smartarse really annoyed me,
           | because of course i'm not that much of an idiot.
           | 
           | Turns out that like another respondent here, animesh, I had
           | 'browser.proton.enabled' set to false too from an attempt to
           | fix my tabs last time FF buggered around with things. Setting
           | that to TRUE has got the colours on.
           | 
           | So, only slightly an idiot...
        
             | SquareWheel wrote:
             | When I see anecdotes like this, I better understand why
             | Mozilla is moving away from about:config. A thousand
             | variables makes issues far more difficult to debug.
        
           | chrisjc wrote:
           | > And it's sizeable.
           | 
           | Can you go into a little more detail about how to resize it?
        
             | cassianoleal wrote:
             | Sizeable means large. It's not the same as being able to
             | resize it.
        
           | animesh wrote:
           | Not anymore. Please check again. I don't see the colored top
           | border on container tabs. I'm on FF 91.0.2 on Win 10.
        
             | mikro2nd wrote:
             | Huh? I'm on 91.0.2 and the coloured border is still there.
             | If there's a newer version (nightly?) where it's gone, I'd
             | have to agree that's an egregious UI FU.
        
               | animesh wrote:
               | Just found that I had the `browser.proton.enabled` false.
               | Toggling it brought back the border on container tabs.
        
             | ohgodplsno wrote:
             | Works on both 91.0 and 93.0 (nightly) on my machine. Did
             | you play with userChrome.css and broke it ?
        
               | animesh wrote:
               | Nope. I don't play with userChrome.css at all. I am just
               | using the System theme.
               | 
               | Just found that I had the `browser.proton.enabled` false.
               | Toggling it brought back the border. Wow. I completely
               | forgot about this setting I changed around FF 87 or so.
        
             | scns wrote:
             | Form over function? Have you considered opening an issue?
             | If any Firefox devs read this please revert that change.
        
               | animesh wrote:
               | PEBKAC :)
               | 
               | Just found that I had the browser.proton.enabled set to
               | false. Toggling it brought back the border on container
               | tabs.
               | 
               | Still don't like the distinction between active tabs and
               | container tabs though.
        
               | animesh wrote:
               | https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ny2199/the_face
               | boo...
               | 
               | As per the /r/firefox subreddit, Mozilla refuses to
               | listen / prioritize this issue.
        
             | Semaphor wrote:
             | https://i.imgur.com/J7iDK21.png
             | 
             | 91.0.2 on Win 10 as well
        
               | animesh wrote:
               | I am using the System theme and don't see it. Huh. I
               | don't remember trying any about:config fixes as well
               | recently. Wonder what is different between our versions.
        
               | animesh wrote:
               | Just found that I had the `browser.proton.enabled` false.
               | Toggling it brought back the border on container tabs.
        
           | asymmetric wrote:
           | How do you resize the colored top border?
        
             | wussboy wrote:
             | Yes, I'd love to make the colours big and bold. No more
             | mixing dev and production...
        
             | ohgodplsno wrote:
             | I don't believe this is exposed by default, but playing
             | around with userChrome.css should be able to change it.
        
       | nickthemagicman wrote:
       | When will Firefox have a better UI for their profiles?
       | 
       | That's literally the only thing stopping me from switching to
       | Firefox.
       | 
       | Google has an entire menu devoted to it.
        
         | imbnwa wrote:
         | Yeah I can't believe they still have the same solution as 2005
        
         | sfink wrote:
         | about:profiles doesn't do what you need?
        
         | commoner wrote:
         | The free and open source Profile Switcher for Firefox
         | extension, paired with the connector app, adds a browser
         | profile menu to Firefox similar to the one on Chrome. See my
         | other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356472
        
       | tusqasi wrote:
       | This seems to be down
        
       | giancarlostoro wrote:
       | The only thing I would love to see for containers is some sort of
       | VPN that lets you connect through a different server on a
       | specific container, and potentially isolated web history between
       | containers. Then if I'm live streaming my browser to online
       | strangers, one of the suggestions should be for anything personal
       | (or if streaming to relatives / co-workers you don't expose your
       | online life, which can be problematic to some), and also due to
       | the container going through a VPN, or maybe even some sort of
       | paid proxy service idk, my IP isn't potentially exposed to
       | internet strangers. Given such an expansion to containers, I
       | would double down and if you open any link from another app,
       | Firefox would ask you which container to open the link through,
       | this way you don't open it under the wrong container.
       | 
       | I know, I know, probably a bit more than containers were intended
       | for, but the containers thus far have been great otherwise. No
       | need to open multiple browsers to test software quickly under
       | multiple accounts, I can just login through all accounts I need
       | to test on multiple containers.
       | 
       | Edit: The more I think about it, the more I feel as though
       | Mozilla could find plenty of VPN (their own underlying provider
       | included) providers to fund support for these changes to make
       | them generic across VPN services and transparent.
        
         | fsflover wrote:
         | If you care about security through compartmentalization that
         | much, you should try Qubes OS. It allows to use different VPNs
         | for different VMs with a pretty good UI.
        
         | okanesen wrote:
         | Probably not exactly what you want but for proxies you can use
         | Container proxy[0] (not affiliated), which allows you to assign
         | different proxies added by yourself to specific containers.
         | 
         | [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-
         | pro...
        
           | kbenson wrote:
           | I've used containers with container proxy for well over a
           | year and it works great for segregating work traffic on my
           | home system. I use a container for work traffic that is
           | assigned to an SSH session to my work system that exposes a
           | SOCKS proxy that I make sure is running.
           | 
           | Eventually I moved work browsing to a different browser that
           | I set to run through that proxy explicitly, but I still have
           | the Firefox config set up in case I don't want to launch
           | that, or don't care to copy and paste to the work browser
           | some times (I wish I could find a way to make links launched
           | from Outlook/Teams to open in Chrome but other links to open
           | in Firefox).
        
             | rmkrmk wrote:
             | If you are on a Mac, have a look at finicky to manage which
             | URLs should open in a specific browser.
             | 
             | https://github.com/johnste/finicky
        
               | kbenson wrote:
               | I'm not, but just yesterday or the day before I was
               | thinking maybe I'd write a simple application to take the
               | URL and make decisions what to do with it afterwards
               | based on whatever data I decide is relevant (time of day,
               | domain, etc). If I had access to what the source
               | application was that would be ideal, but I doubt Windows
               | 10 supplies that.
        
         | abdullahkhalids wrote:
         | > The only thing I would love to see for containers is some
         | sort of VPN that lets you connect through a different server on
         | a specific container
         | 
         | Congrats, you just invented the Tor browser. Or at least a
         | variant where you are happy to store history etc on your
         | machine.
        
           | Nbox9 wrote:
           | Does Tor have enough bandwidth for streaming now?
        
             | abdullahkhalids wrote:
             | On the rare occasion that you can get Youtube (because of
             | google's rate limits) or similar to open on Tor, it can
             | easily stream HD videos.
        
         | lugged wrote:
         | You can use profiles for von stuff. Containers only really
         | works for site based state.
        
         | loudtieblahblah wrote:
         | Use FoxyProxy in conjunction with containers.
        
         | mozillamaxx wrote:
         | Hey there! I'm one of the devs on this project. We made some
         | progress last year on per-container proxy support. Follow this
         | issue for (hopefully soon) progress here:
         | 
         | https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/pull/190...
        
       | amphitheatre wrote:
       | One issue I have when using containers is that if I have a non-
       | containerised tab and I click a link in it that leads to Twitter,
       | which I have a container for, a new tab opens in the container,
       | but the current tab also switches to a Twitter tab with the
       | click, clobbering my session/history.
       | 
       | Is this a bug or conflict with another setting or add-on?
        
         | tsjq wrote:
         | this doesn't happen for me. what's the other add-ons you have ?
        
           | amphitheatre wrote:
           | I have things like CanvasBlocker, uBlock Origin, Tree Style
           | Tabs, etc, and disabled third-party cookies. But nothing that
           | should actively interfere with it. wrt containers, I have
           | Multi-Account Containers, Containerise, and Temporary
           | Containers. It happens every time I go to a URL that has an
           | associated container I've made (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook
           | etc).
           | 
           | I might try resetting my container plugins to see if I can
           | clear it.
        
           | amphitheatre wrote:
           | Fixed it. Containerise has a separate "Keep old tabs" setting
           | that is different to the Multi-Account Containers "Replace
           | tab" functionality. It works as intended now. Horray!
        
       | mech422 wrote:
       | Don't forget, you can still use multiple profiles. I have
       | multiple shortcuts setup, each starting FF with a different
       | profile. Within a profile, I use containers to further partition
       | things.
       | 
       | edit: for instance, I have a 'banking' profile with containers
       | for each bank, brokerage, etc. The profile is totally separate
       | from my 'general browsing' profile, so nothing can be sniffed.
       | And the containers allow me to partition off each service
        
         | scns wrote:
         | Good idea, i opened a private window with all extensions
         | disabled for banking and closed the normal window. Like your
         | solution even more.
        
         | chrisjc wrote:
         | Very interesting... The one nice thing about containers is
         | being able to move sites from one profile to another if
         | necessary.
         | 
         | Can you do the same with profiles? If I come across a link in
         | one profile, but one to open it in another, is there a way
         | seamless way to do it?
        
           | mech422 wrote:
           | other the copy/paste the url? I'm not aware of one..though,
           | that's not very 'seamless' :-) The whole idea is that
           | profiles are totally separate - separate process, config,
           | etc.
        
         | commoner wrote:
         | I use profiles and containers together in Firefox, which gives
         | more flexibility than either of these features alone.
         | 
         | Firefox lacks a built-in profile switcher menu like the one in
         | Chrome, but the FOSS browser extension called Profile Switcher
         | for Firefox is a similar replacement:
         | 
         | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
         | 
         | You'll need to install the connector for the extension to work:
         | 
         | https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher-connect...
        
         | cassepipe wrote:
         | I always wondered why there was no easier way to change
         | profiles in firefox than about:profiles. I am not sure what
         | your solution is though, would you mind going into details ?
         | Thanks in advance
        
           | nsomaru wrote:
           | You can create a shortcut which will launch with the profile
           | of choice: https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1171685
        
             | imbnwa wrote:
             | The problem is that this is the same solution as it was in
             | 2005 and no average user is mucking about with specified
             | shortcuts or command line flags. Chromium has demonstrated
             | the most obvious GUI for this but for whatever reason the
             | FF product team believes we should prefer about:profiles or
             | this solution.
        
           | commoner wrote:
           | There is an easier way, if you are willing to install the
           | Profile Switcher for Firefox extension and accompanying
           | connector. See my other comment:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356472
        
           | mickhead23 wrote:
           | I launch my FF profiles from the terminal using aliases. But
           | I guess some people would find that difficult (though it's
           | not) even if they do happen to be a Linux user.
        
           | mech422 wrote:
           | I just have a shortcut for launching with the -P (Profile)
           | and -new-process options.
        
         | extra88 wrote:
         | What benefit do you get from starting another Firefox instance
         | with a different profile compared to simply using a different
         | container in the same instance?
        
           | pavon wrote:
           | The ability to configure browser and extension settings
           | differently for different profiles, plus different
           | history/cookie for each.
           | 
           | This is nice for experimenting with changes to umatrix
           | settings without having results "pollute" my long-lived
           | container storage.
           | 
           | Also nice as a relief valve for when I don't won't to deal
           | with my locked-down default settings, and just want to open
           | up a site with everything enabled in a temporary container
           | that gets blown away when I'm done.
        
           | SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
           | Different profiles can have different extensions, so if you
           | don't fully trust some extension you can isolate it to a
           | given profile.
        
             | tzs wrote:
             | Also different bookmarks and different histories.
        
       | cmeacham98 wrote:
       | Alternative low-effort solution that might break some websites
       | (only issue I've run into so far is U2F based 2FA with Duo):
       | 
       | privacy.firstparty.isolate -> true (in about:config)
       | 
       | Effectively acts as a separate 'container' for every website.
        
         | syshum wrote:
         | The problem here comes in when you have things like SSO where
         | many sites auth to Google, or AzureAD, etc.
         | 
         | With Continers I can login to the same site with mutiple
         | accounts, for example one common use it where you have a Admin
         | Account, and a Regular Account. You can use FireFox Containers
         | to access the same site(s) using different accounts
         | 
         | I also do this with Amazon, so I can have my Work Amazon, and
         | my personal Amazon separated with out having to use the "Change
         | Account" feature which I find to be annoying
        
           | cmeacham98 wrote:
           | Yeah, I agree there are definitely usecases containers
           | address that FPI doesn't. However, if your use case is just
           | "I don't want Facebook and friends to track me across
           | websites", you should give FPI a try!
        
       | thrwawy283 wrote:
       | The real gem is this extension: Temporary Containers
       | 
       | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
       | 
       | Basically every new tab is a new temporary container. Isolation
       | all the time, by default. It's an added exercise for the reader,
       | but you have to go into the settings of the extension and modify
       | some of the mouse behavior. Basically if I want a link I click to
       | share the same container as the parent, I Ctrl + Click. Left-
       | clicking or middle-clicking is always a new temporary container.
       | 
       | Containers are so much more than cookie isolation.
        
         | KeyBoardG wrote:
         | Agreed, I love this. Just use a different hot-key to open a new
         | tab that is in its own container.
        
         | nickthemagicman wrote:
         | How is that different from anonymous browsing tabs?
        
           | pvitz wrote:
           | Apart from the features in the sibling comment, your history
           | will be kept.
        
           | lucideer wrote:
           | Anon browsing allows max 2 separate simultaneous contexts:
           | the anon session and your tracked session. This allows many
           | different anon sessions. It's also a nicer more consistent
           | integration if you already use (permanent) containers.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | It's per tab not per window and they can coexist with trusted
           | containers. It also has a non-automatic mode where you select
           | sites that open in temporary containers instead of selecting
           | sites that don't.
        
         | SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
         | I add Containerize to that:
         | 
         | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containerise
         | 
         | It lets you define rules for URLs to allow any URL matching a
         | pattern to always open in a certain container.
        
           | c1yd3i wrote:
           | How is this different than managing the site list for a
           | Firefox Container? Just that it's a CSV and patterns are
           | supported?
           | 
           | Do you just not define anything in the Firefox Container site
           | list, and rely on this to manage it instead?
        
             | lucideer wrote:
             | The main Firefox Containers extension has a nicer UI but
             | quite a lot of missing features. Mainly the ability to edit
             | the site list directly, and the fact that the way it
             | registers a site against a container means it can't support
             | adding a redirect to a container, nor (related) having
             | separate Google services in separate containers (e.g. a
             | Youtube container and separate Gmail container).
        
             | nsomaru wrote:
             | For me a source of some frustration is redirects and
             | subdomains, which I need to visit manually with network
             | switched off in order to add to the right container. This
             | will help a lot for that issue!
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | abryzak wrote:
         | I use this as well and it's quite good.
         | 
         | The only thing I sometimes have a problem with is when going
         | through a payment flow using PayPal and forgetting to open the
         | site in a persistent container. Many sites will fail to process
         | the payment on the redirect back to the site as it ends up in
         | another container.
         | 
         | I haven't looked recently, but I didn't see an option to open a
         | site in an existing temporary container based on domain if
         | there is one already open which I believe would solve this.
        
       | d4nyll wrote:
       | I've been using Firefox Containers for over half a year now (I
       | use it with the Temporary Containers[1] extension). For most
       | parts, it's working great.
       | 
       | However, whenever I encounter pop-up sign-in pages, such as for
       | older websites and some Firefox extensions, the resulting user
       | session cannot be accessed by the original page or extension.
       | This is even if I open the pop-up with the same container, or
       | with the 'No container' option.
       | 
       | [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-
       | con...
        
       | konradkpl wrote:
       | Firefox Containers is a great feature that deserves more credits.
       | This feature allows us to avoid tracking, while at the same time
       | ensuring the convenience of use and does not require the user to
       | change their habits. Do you want to limit facebook? Create the
       | container, set the default facebook.com opening in it, and use
       | the browser as before. This should be a standard feature in any
       | browser.
        
         | freediver wrote:
         | Not a container user so I hope you don't mind me asking, how is
         | this different to opening facebook in new private tab/window?
         | Is the convenience in the act of automatically opening it in
         | container if you type in facebook.com or follow a link to it?
        
       | charles-m-knox wrote:
       | Love seeing mentions of Firefox containers on HN. The native
       | multi-account containers UI isn't able to do things such as
       | container filtering, bulk rename/delete/recollection/etc, so a
       | bit less than a year ago I wrote a lightweight extension to help
       | manage containers here:
       | 
       | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-he...
        
         | charles-m-knox wrote:
         | I'm not sure how to edit my original comment, but
         | "recollection" should be "re-color". This was due to
         | autocorrect.
        
         | wussboy wrote:
         | Bookmarked. Will try immediately upon arrival at work.
        
       | gnufied wrote:
       | Personally I love containers and I can't imagine using a browser
       | without them. Though one issue which has been long standing for
       | me is - tab search ('%') only works for current container. This
       | is a big problem if you have 10-15 tabs open in different
       | containers. Switching to tab you want is not easy. I wish mozilla
       | prioritized and fixed -
       | https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1479858
        
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