Firefox Containers Preview

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-containers-preview/

by twapi • 1 day ago

153 63 1 day ago

blog.mozilla.org

Oddly enough I thought Firefox had that a few years ago. I forget what I used - maybe a Mozilla extension? - but it even colour-coded tabs.

Am I wrong? Was it unofficial? A hack?

notatoad• 1 day ago

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.

NoGravitas• 1 day ago

It was an official extension, distributed separately from Firefox, but it was so ubiquitous and a dependency for so many other Firefox extensions, that it would be unusual to not have it installed.

Alifatisk• 1 day ago

Firefox multicontainers I think it is

zache6• 1 day ago

The article mentions this extension; it seems like what you're describing: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

ars3• 1 day ago

I have containers on Firefox, and I do NOT have this extension installed.

ars3• 1 day ago

I'm a little confused here, I've been using the containers feature already for years now on Firefox. And I have no add-on installed for it, it just works.

So what is it that they're adding?

moritzwarhier• 1 day ago

Kubernetes

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.

dizhn• 1 day ago

You could have containers but the software itself had no way to manage them. The extension provided the de facto default way to manage them. I think now they are baking the functionality in. I wish they would actually flesh out split tabs. It is so barebones it pissed me off enough to sort of stop using Firefox on a few boxes altogether after decades of use.The browser seems to be the last thing on this company's mind.

Izkata3• 1 day ago

No, it's at about:preferences#containers and has been for years if you turn it on in about:config (privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled).

pentagrama• 1 day ago

I’ve been using Firefox Containers for years through Mozilla’s Multi-Account Containers extension.[1] Now that container management is available directly in Firefox, I’d prefer to use the native implementation if possible.

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...

giancarlostoro• 1 day ago

Back in like 2017? or 2018 when Containers came out for Firefox, I used the Multi-Account Containers Extension to manage QA testing of web apps, I'd have a container labeled for the user I wanted to log in as and test. It's insanely useful for the web.

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.

bityard• 1 day ago

site-specific container assignments

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.

Walf• 17 hours ago

For me, this is almost an anti-feature. I still use it for a few sites, but the real killer feature of containers is that it becomes a breeze to use the same service with different accounts & identities, without logging in and out, and no shared state. Pinning a site to a container breaks that.

realityfactchex• 1 day ago

Can I safely uninstall the extension and keep my existing containers, names, colors, icons, cookies, and active sessions?

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).

chao-• 1 day ago

Firefox's Multi-Account Containers changed the game for me back in 2018 or 2019, and is what got me to switch back to Firefox for 95% of my personal browser use. The "Always open {{domain}} in this container" and the ability to open a specific container with a keyboard shortcut seem like small things, but I can't imagine life without them anymore.

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."

waz0wski• 1 day ago

Yep, same here

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

BlueGreenMagick• 23 hours ago

Fyi Kagi's Orion browser also supports containers

https://help.kagi.com/orion/features/containers.html

wsgeorge• 1 day ago

But Firefox also has browser profiles now (something I wanted for so long I moved back to chrome to get it), so what’s the purpose of first-party containers now? Don’t browser profiles provide a more robust, very visible delineation between different accounts/user profiles?

ars3• 1 day ago

A profile is a full new browser, these containers are just tabs. So they mix into the current browser window.

They are much more lightweight, and the workflow is better, just switch tabs.

rhdunn• 1 day ago

Firefox has had profiles for a long time (via about:profiles and a command-line argument). Unfortunately, the new profiles are not compatible with the old ones and cannot be migrated.

dolmen2• 21 hours ago

Firefox added a layer on top to allow to show the list of profiles in the UI.

I recently started a new job and built 3 profiles on Windows, then switched to Ubuntu. The migration of my profiles was painful because of that new layer: migration of each profile was working fine, but didn't see each other.

Thankfully Claude was helpful to debug and fix the settings. I had to edit SQLite databases.

xnx• 1 day ago

This is great, and the direction Firefox should focus on: creating user-first features that other browsers won't and extension authors can't.

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?

wtfHN26• 1 day ago

I isolate containers by the type of account I am using on there.

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.

ashkulz• 1 day ago

Use the Temporary Containers extension, it does just that.

midnight_eclair• 1 day ago

tree style tabs and container-locked windows. that will make firefox perfect.

XJ0OYtjb• 1 day ago

My guess as to what's new here is... nothing.

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.

svl72• 1 day ago

Multi-Account Containers paired with Container Proxy allows for some really cool setups. I especially like the options to use socks proxies. Hope they will add proper proxy support later.

warpech• 1 day ago

What are the cool setups with proxies?

svl72• 1 day ago

It allows me to access different networks (that might only be reachable via jumphosts or similar) from the same browser. Also at work - some required browser based tools are only accessible via specific proxies. With container specific proxies that's a breeze.

em-bee4• 22 hours ago

interesting. i was not aware of that feature. this will be very useful.

robinhood• 1 day ago

Amazing news. Wonder if this will be synced on multiple machines through Mozilla Connect, since that wasn't the case with the Mozilla’s Multi-Account Containers extension before.

I hope it is, since it was a major pain point before.

sfRattan• 1 day ago

The Multi-account containers extension does sync via Firefox sync, but you have to go into the extension's settings in each browser and manually enable it. Annoying, and took me a while to find it, but it's there at least. Hopefully won't be necessary to manually switch on once containers are a part of Firefox proper.

mixmastamyk• 1 day ago

I hope they improve the UI, it has been difficult to use. Several menus with different random functionality that don’t have the options I’m looking for. Many times I have to hunt through the extension preferences to do simple things.

Also the “temporary container” extension is quite useful and closer to what I need in the first place.

jillesvangurp• 1 day ago

Good that they are integrating that into the main browser.

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.

toss1• 1 day ago

If seems this should make obsolete the setup of having a separate computer (e.g., old laptop) to isolate Facebook properties, or am I missing something where a separate machine would be advantageous?

(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)

yjftsjthsd-h• 1 day ago

Depends. Either you need to guard against e.g. fingerprinting the GPU, in which case you still need a separate machine, or you only need simple separation of cookies and the like, in which case you never needed that and could just use separate browser profiles. But yeah, I think in the latter case containers should work, though if it matters you should double check what exactly they do and don't separate.

WorldMaker3• 5 hours ago

This has been one of my use cases for the Multi-Account Containers extension for some time now. It's actually such a motivating use case that one of Firefox explorations into a "simpler" focused UX alternative to the Multi-Account Container extension is called "Facebook Container" and does only that, isolate Facebook, specifically into its own Container.

As noted, it can't defeat all forms of device fingerprinting, but it does defeat cookie tracking.

fph• 1 day ago

Are they shipping it on Android, too?

lukeschlather• 1 day ago

I use profiles for this, I wonder what the tradeoffs are between the two approaches. I've actually been thinking about building some tools to make it easier to create and manage profiles on the fly. For me I really think profiles are better since the boundaries are harder - there's no worry about accidentally hitting the "log in with Google" button and clearly identifying myself to a site or similar, because I read the news in a separate profile from my Google account. And it would be nice if those sort of guardrails were very intuitive and easy to set up by default. But I feel like containers may be too squishy.

em-bee4• 22 hours ago

the benefit of containers is that they are all in the same browser. all your settings, extensions, remembered passwords, etc. apply to all containers and you can more easily reopen a site in a different container.

i don't get the login with google problem. you would be logged in in one container and not in any of the others. unless you open a site in your "google container", nothing will happen. the container where you log in to google should automatically stay logged in anyways (i am not sure, i don't use google login, but it works like that for many other logins, hackernews for example) so you should never be tempted to hit that login with google button. the separate process only helps you if you save the google password in the browser. if you are like me and don't store passwords in the browser then the containers have the advantage that it is easier to check if you are in the right container instead of making sure you are in the right profile, unless you use themes to differentiate your profiles.

_rwo• 16 hours ago

the benefit of containers is that they are all in the same browser. all your settings, extensions, remembered passwords (...)

YMMV that's exactly the downside of containers for me xD

Since Firefox (nightly) introduced multi profiles support I didn't looked back - requires some initial setup as you pretty much need to configure browser from scratch, but that full separation works way better for me - especially that you can e.g. configure same plugin in slightly different way per profile (ad blockers, password managers etc.); and somehow under macos when I have currently active profile and I click on some links (e.g. in slack) it picks up that active profile correctly

dolmen2• 21 hours ago

Working with multiple profiles is painful as you have to duplicate setup, and data for extensions such as uMatrix isn't shared.

Also I would like each Firefox profile running instance to have its own icon at OS (desktop) level (Ubuntu, Windows) to ease switching.

WorldMaker3• 5 hours ago

Profiles and Containers are a bit of a peanut butter and jelly situation. There's uses for both separately, there's a strong intersection of what they do well that you use either for (topping a slice of toast), and then together they also can make a beautiful sandwich.

Profiles form very different windows. You can decorate them to make them obvious at a glance which Profile is which. Up until recent Profile improvements, switching between them and managing them used to be a lot of work, including managing which one was the default for links from other applications.

Containers are tabs in a shared window. They get marked with a subtle color bar (the colors you choose for each container) and that's mostly it, they otherwise "blend in" to the same shared window. Reopening tabs in a different container is easy. Opening new tabs in a different container is easy. Containers share a few more things than Profiles do (but are still isolated in important ways such as cookies).

I have every site that needs my Google account pinned to always open in a specific container. The boundary is hard where I need it (the privacy protections) but soft for make workflows easier. If I find a YouTube embed in the wild somewhere that needs a login for one of the many restrictive reasons some do, I just click the normal link (or middle click for new tab) and YouTube opens in my Google container automatically. I don't need to copy paste between windows (or use Sync's sometimes slow tab sync engine). If I accidental hit a "log in with Google" button it opens up in the Google container and I know something is wrong because I don't expect random other websites in that container. (Relatedly, I finally installed uBlock Origin not to get rid of ads, but solely to get rid of that awful annoying content-obscuring popup for Google login on sites like Medium. I feel like there should be far more backlash on Google for being a bad actor doing that.)

I also use Profiles for alternate identities, things where a very different looking window are helpful to know I'm in the right place. Containers and Profiles are useful together.

unethical_ban• 1 day ago

I would love to see a better UI for

  - Forcing container usage/default window popup for assigning sites to containers
  - Viewing a list of websites assigned per container

That said I think containers are a great idea, I currently use it to isolate Meta and Amazon sites. Could probably be doing more.

coreylane• 1 day ago

Does Chrome have this yet? It's basically the single feature I use Firefox for. And no, container tabs & incognito mode don't count.

mmooss• 1 day ago

I'm curious about Mozilla's seeming shift in strategy (possibly it was awhile ago and I overlooked it):

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?

theknarf• 1 day ago

I'm glad that Firefox is catching up, but they still have a lot of catching up to do compared to Arc/Zen. You got people out there like xe-darc innovating on putting Docker containers in your browser, and Firefox is just getting preview support for built in profiles.

egamirorrim• 1 day ago

What on earth is the use case for a docker container in a browser?

sylens• 1 day ago

I am a big user of the multi-account containers extension. It is nice to keep banking in one container, Amazon in its own container, social media in its own, and so on.

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.

ptx• 1 day ago

This is not new, and it's weird that this blog post doesn't acknowledge that.

A a snapshot from 2017 [0] of their docs show the UI for this very feature. A snapshot from 2023 of their knowledge base [1] says that "Firefox Containers is a basic built-in feature".

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".

So what are they talking about in this blog post? 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").

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20170821073747/https://developer...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230307151023/https://support.m...

em-bee4• 22 hours ago

the Multi-Account Containers extension always only added additional UI functions to manage containers. it was never a different container implementation. so they are migrating UI features from the extensions back into the core.

"Not all of the features of the add-on are available in the first-party version of containers just yet, we’re still building them out."

the migration is not complete yet. i expect that eventually the extension will be made redundant.

molticrystal• 21 hours ago

Extensions per container would be a great addition if they don't already have that planned or available. Sometimes an extensions for privacy or security interferes with a website and if I could fork my base enabled extensions then disable a few for just that site it could keep things more compact and organized instead of having to clone a profile for every website with issues.

pantulis2• 8 hours ago

The "per container" number of features that come to mind is never ending. For example, I'd love to have something like Safari's "Profile bookmarks" that allow you to set a different subset of your global bookmarks as the root of your bookmark bar per profile. This is insanely useful.

pantulis2• 8 hours ago

Well it came to me that I could write that as an extension with Claude Code. And it's showing good progress.

nhumrich• 21 hours ago

The only feature I need to make containers complete is setting a container as the current container for external links.

It's a real pain to click links in slack/etc open in the wrong account. I would be okay with some type of "links currently open in which container" setting, and changing that as needed. Or some selector when external.

SwiftyBug• 10 hours ago

Multi-account containers is the main reason why I stick to Firefox. Safari and Chrome also have container features (more like profiles, really), but they don't work the same: you open tabs in a separate profile and you can't have tabs, each in a different container, side by side.

Firefox Containers Preview

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