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Ironically, the thing that drove me to Firefox was the excellent Account Containers system that I found necessary to manage being logged into multiple Google Ap

Ironically, the thing that drove me to Firefox was the excellent Account Containers system that I found necessary to manage being logged into multiple Google Apps accounts simultaneously (I have five). Each tab owns one account — that way, Google Drive files from my work don't randomly refuse to open because I'm also logged into my personal account. (Chrome has no solution for containing accounts across tabs, last I checked. You have to spawn entire new Chrome instances.)

ghaff 8y ago
Not sure I understand. I routinely have a personal Google Drive tab and a work tab in Chrome. Ditto with email.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 8y ago
  Is this a Google accounts feature or a browser feature? I switched to FF for Container Tabs, and use it for much more than Google accounts.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Two disconnected accounts. ADDED: In general a lot of services don't handle multiple accounts terribly well. I've had issues with Wordpress as well. I actually have two different soft-key authenticator programs related to making personal and work accounts play nice.
    - nybblet 8y ago
      Sounds like you're using the Google Accounts feature, and using the [separate] browser profiles feature would exactly solve your problem. In particular: you can log into different profiles in the browser (each window can be associated with up to one profile, and they can be different), by clicking the little "Sign In" tab in the upper right corner. See also https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GE.... You can then open tabs under the different profiles with right-click, "Open link as", and selecting the appropriate profile. (Personally, once I tried profiles, I never touched multiple-accounts-logged-in again.)
  - just_one_time_ 8y ago
    Yes, it does work now in Chrome, I think it just changed is most recent update so not sure why guy above is acting like its alwasy been that way, I'd say its time to try Chromium (Brave) again.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  There are occasions where Google’s native multi account management falls flat.
  - kylehotchkiss 8y ago
    stackdriver.com has to be one of the worst! selecting the right account just causes an infinite loop if the correct account isn't index[0] in your logged in accounts!
  - menacingly 8y ago
    Especially surrounding Drive. I don't envy them, it's tough to get right.
    - Manishearth 8y ago
      Support for multiple accounts in drive is pretty great (minor papercuts here and there) as long as all but one of your accounts is an Apps account. This feels like an issue that they've fixed but not rolled out. Except this has been a problem for years, and according to a friend of mine who's had a "personal" Apps account from back when it was free, never has been a problem for Apps users, so I'm not sure what's going on on their end.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I have had problems. I don't remember what I did but they went away. And now I use two accounts in Chrome routinely without issues.
- Manishearth 8y ago
  That's probably because your work account is a Google Apps account, which works much better especially for Drive (the problem is that you can't have more than one non-Apps account using drive at once in the same session. I have no idea why, but it seems to be deliberate). I'm unsure if the brokenness is fixed with Apps accounts on other Google services that are bad at handling multiple accounts.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
What does that mean in terms of resources? Is 2 FF tabs that much less taxing than 2 Chrome instances? fwiw, I use multiple Chromes, each with its own project / client, own password manager, etc. I don't think I could maintain the silos I do with FF. I wish I could sack Google (Chrome) but I can't, afaik.
- Sylos 8y ago
  Firefox supports both, completely separated browser profiles and these more lightweight Container Tabs. You can type "about:profiles" into the URL-bar to manage your profiles (which you can also bookmark for easier access). You can also run "firefox -P" in a terminal to access a similar GUI. With "firefox -P profile_name", you can start a specific profile. To run multiple profiles in parallel from the CLI, you have to start further profiles with "firefox -P profile_name --new-instance" (Linux) or "firefox.exe -P profile_name --no-remote" (Windows). This is because when you click on a link in an application, it needs to know in which browser instance to open that link. As for resource usage, the profiles separate everything. Browsing history, bookmarks, logins, add-ons etc. It's essentially like a second Firefox installation. This also means that it actually runs two instances, so twice the RAM usage and somewhat more CPU usage to move that data around. The Container Tabs on the other hand only separate what needs to be separated in order to look towards webpages like two different browsers. So, there's a different cookie jar, different localStorage, different HTML5 Web Storage etc., but other than that it's the same as just opening two tabs. So, probably not even 1% more RAM usage than using Firefox without any separation.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Can I have multiple profiles open at the same time?
    - Sylos 8y ago
      Yeah, in about:profiles, there's a "Launch profile in new browser"-button. For launching multiple profiles in parallel from the command-line, I already tried to explain it in my previous comment, though it is more finicky that way.
ktosobcy 8y ago
Supposedly you can be logged-in to multiple Google accounts but… it's very broken most of the time and works only for basic gmail browsing sadly. And containers in firefox are simply amazing! I use it very often to access "admin accounts" on the occasion without the hurdle to use private browsing.
SimeVidas 8y ago
For me it’s Twitter. With container tabs, it’s so easy to manage multiple Twitter accounts. I couldn’t live without it.
- SXX 8y ago
  Why don't you use TweetDeck? https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
  - SimeVidas 8y ago
    I didn’t know it supported multiple accounts. Not bad.
bla2 8y ago
I don't think that's true. You can have a profile per window, the windows live in the same process.
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  per window. not per tab.
- Sylos 8y ago
  Not even tabs usually live in the same process, so you must be misinterpreting something. I think, the Windows Task Manager groups processes in the most stupid of ways, where when a (parent-)process has spawned many child-processes, then only the parent-process and its resource usage is shown. You have to go into the "Processes"-tab to see all Chrome-processes and manually add up their resource usage.
ReverseCold 8y ago
> Google Drive files from my work don't randomly refuse to open because I'm also logged into my personal account Ugh, this is a common problem apparently. Why can't they just make it open files from my org domain using the only org account I'm logged into. >:(
- dvtrn 8y ago
  I spent about three hours trying to figure out why apps scripts were breaking and refusing to open the editor until finally finding a helpful blog post: logged into multiple accounts? You may have trouble with apps scripting-something I had come to rely on with Sheets. I wouldn't call it 'infuriating', but it's something that I can't figure out "how does this of all things break this of all things?"
atombender 8y ago
Google's account management is infuriating! First, it almost never remembers what account you used with what service. If I do some Google Cloud stuff under my work account, I don't want Google Maps using my work account, or vice versa. The list of accounts in the upper right corner, and what's signed in/out, seems completely random and broken. The second problem is that Google's various apps are wildly inconsistent in how they deal with multiple accounts. Some (like Maps) have apparently been "modernized". Others (like BigQuery; I've had issues with Google Drive, too) don't understand multiple accounts at all. It doesn't matter that you sign into a work account. Open that app and it will use some other account. A sign they've not mastered this at all is that it doesn't work at the URL level. You can bookmark a Google Docs document, for example, and then switch your accounts. Going to the bookmark (or just going back) to the Docs page gives you a "permission denied" error because you're using the wrong account. Same thing with sharing URLs — if someone at work sends me a Google Docs URL, it's bound to not work because it'll try to use what I try to keep as my default account, which is my personal one. Sometimes I just munge the "authuser=1" part in the URL. It's amazing that a Google app can't simply resolve the union of identities you're signed in as. I have two accounts, work and personal, and one of them has access, after all. I might consider FF just to work around this.
- everdev 8y ago
  Yep, tried to demo Google's new app builder and I couldn't get authenticated with the correct Google account after 10min and gave up. Google drive is the biggest annoyance though with multiple accounts.
  - wichert 8y ago
    I have this problem with JIRA: ever since Google authentication was enabled there I can not login on two separate JIRA instances with the same browser.
- flatline 8y ago
  For a long time you couldn’t switch between google accounts at all except via url manipulation.
- 8y ago
torgoguys 8y ago
Right, Chrome can't silo things like that between tabs, but can between windows using separate chrome profiles. Not as handy as container tabs but not horrible either. Agree that you shouldn't try mixing personal and Google apps account in the same session...it always breaks eventually. (Why can't Google get that right?)
- aaron_m04 8y ago
  If you have two windows, each with a different Chrome profile, that counts as a different session, right?
  - torgoguys 8y ago
    Correct
Mayzie 8y ago
> the thing that drove me to Firefox was the excellent Account Containers system Though unfortunately, history and bookmarks are not isolated to their individual containers, and Firefox's profile management system is a PITA compared to Chrome's easy button in the title bar.
- andrewaylett 8y ago
  As a counterpoint, in my use of Containers I'm very happy that history and bookmarks are shared.

ghaff 8y ago

Not sure I understand. I routinely have a personal Google Drive tab and a work tab in Chrome. Ditto with email.

SparkyMcUnicorn 8y ago
Is this a Google accounts feature or a browser feature? I switched to FF for Container Tabs, and use it for much more than Google accounts.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Two disconnected accounts. ADDED: In general a lot of services don't handle multiple accounts terribly well. I've had issues with Wordpress as well. I actually have two different soft-key authenticator programs related to making personal and work accounts play nice.
  - nybblet 8y ago
    Sounds like you're using the Google Accounts feature, and using the [separate] browser profiles feature would exactly solve your problem. In particular: you can log into different profiles in the browser (each window can be associated with up to one profile, and they can be different), by clicking the little "Sign In" tab in the upper right corner. See also https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en&co=GE.... You can then open tabs under the different profiles with right-click, "Open link as", and selecting the appropriate profile. (Personally, once I tried profiles, I never touched multiple-accounts-logged-in again.)
- just_one_time_ 8y ago
  Yes, it does work now in Chrome, I think it just changed is most recent update so not sure why guy above is acting like its alwasy been that way, I'd say its time to try Chromium (Brave) again.
toomuchtodo 8y ago
There are occasions where Google’s native multi account management falls flat.
- kylehotchkiss 8y ago
  stackdriver.com has to be one of the worst! selecting the right account just causes an infinite loop if the correct account isn't index[0] in your logged in accounts!
- menacingly 8y ago
  Especially surrounding Drive. I don't envy them, it's tough to get right.
  - Manishearth 8y ago
    Support for multiple accounts in drive is pretty great (minor papercuts here and there) as long as all but one of your accounts is an Apps account. This feels like an issue that they've fixed but not rolled out. Except this has been a problem for years, and according to a friend of mine who's had a "personal" Apps account from back when it was free, never has been a problem for Apps users, so I'm not sure what's going on on their end.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I have had problems. I don't remember what I did but they went away. And now I use two accounts in Chrome routinely without issues.
Manishearth 8y ago
That's probably because your work account is a Google Apps account, which works much better especially for Drive (the problem is that you can't have more than one non-Apps account using drive at once in the same session. I have no idea why, but it seems to be deliberate). I'm unsure if the brokenness is fixed with Apps accounts on other Google services that are bad at handling multiple accounts.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

What does that mean in terms of resources? Is 2 FF tabs that much less taxing than 2 Chrome instances? fwiw, I use multiple Chromes, each with its own project / client, own password manager, etc. I don't think I could maintain the silos I do with FF. I wish I could sack Google (Chrome) but I can't, afaik.

Sylos 8y ago
Firefox supports both, completely separated browser profiles and these more lightweight Container Tabs. You can type "about:profiles" into the URL-bar to manage your profiles (which you can also bookmark for easier access). You can also run "firefox -P" in a terminal to access a similar GUI. With "firefox -P profile_name", you can start a specific profile. To run multiple profiles in parallel from the CLI, you have to start further profiles with "firefox -P profile_name --new-instance" (Linux) or "firefox.exe -P profile_name --no-remote" (Windows). This is because when you click on a link in an application, it needs to know in which browser instance to open that link. As for resource usage, the profiles separate everything. Browsing history, bookmarks, logins, add-ons etc. It's essentially like a second Firefox installation. This also means that it actually runs two instances, so twice the RAM usage and somewhat more CPU usage to move that data around. The Container Tabs on the other hand only separate what needs to be separated in order to look towards webpages like two different browsers. So, there's a different cookie jar, different localStorage, different HTML5 Web Storage etc., but other than that it's the same as just opening two tabs. So, probably not even 1% more RAM usage than using Firefox without any separation.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Can I have multiple profiles open at the same time?
  - Sylos 8y ago
    Yeah, in about:profiles, there's a "Launch profile in new browser"-button. For launching multiple profiles in parallel from the command-line, I already tried to explain it in my previous comment, though it is more finicky that way.

ktosobcy 8y ago

Supposedly you can be logged-in to multiple Google accounts but… it's very broken most of the time and works only for basic gmail browsing sadly. And containers in firefox are simply amazing! I use it very often to access "admin accounts" on the occasion without the hurdle to use private browsing.

SimeVidas 8y ago

For me it’s Twitter. With container tabs, it’s so easy to manage multiple Twitter accounts. I couldn’t live without it.

SXX 8y ago
Why don't you use TweetDeck? https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
- SimeVidas 8y ago
  I didn’t know it supported multiple accounts. Not bad.

bla2 8y ago

I don't think that's true. You can have a profile per window, the windows live in the same process.

jiveturkey 8y ago
per window. not per tab.
Sylos 8y ago
Not even tabs usually live in the same process, so you must be misinterpreting something. I think, the Windows Task Manager groups processes in the most stupid of ways, where when a (parent-)process has spawned many child-processes, then only the parent-process and its resource usage is shown. You have to go into the "Processes"-tab to see all Chrome-processes and manually add up their resource usage.

ReverseCold 8y ago

> Google Drive files from my work don't randomly refuse to open because I'm also logged into my personal account Ugh, this is a common problem apparently. Why can't they just make it open files from my org domain using the only org account I'm logged into. >:(

dvtrn 8y ago
I spent about three hours trying to figure out why apps scripts were breaking and refusing to open the editor until finally finding a helpful blog post: logged into multiple accounts? You may have trouble with apps scripting-something I had come to rely on with Sheets. I wouldn't call it 'infuriating', but it's something that I can't figure out "how does this of all things break this of all things?"

atombender 8y ago

Google's account management is infuriating! First, it almost never remembers what account you used with what service. If I do some Google Cloud stuff under my work account, I don't want Google Maps using my work account, or vice versa. The list of accounts in the upper right corner, and what's signed in/out, seems completely random and broken. The second problem is that Google's various apps are wildly inconsistent in how they deal with multiple accounts. Some (like Maps) have apparently been "modernized". Others (like BigQuery; I've had issues with Google Drive, too) don't understand multiple accounts at all. It doesn't matter that you sign into a work account. Open that app and it will use some other account. A sign they've not mastered this at all is that it doesn't work at the URL level. You can bookmark a Google Docs document, for example, and then switch your accounts. Going to the bookmark (or just going back) to the Docs page gives you a "permission denied" error because you're using the wrong account. Same thing with sharing URLs — if someone at work sends me a Google Docs URL, it's bound to not work because it'll try to use what I try to keep as my default account, which is my personal one. Sometimes I just munge the "authuser=1" part in the URL. It's amazing that a Google app can't simply resolve the union of identities you're signed in as. I have two accounts, work and personal, and one of them has access, after all. I might consider FF just to work around this.

everdev 8y ago
Yep, tried to demo Google's new app builder and I couldn't get authenticated with the correct Google account after 10min and gave up. Google drive is the biggest annoyance though with multiple accounts.
- wichert 8y ago
  I have this problem with JIRA: ever since Google authentication was enabled there I can not login on two separate JIRA instances with the same browser.
flatline 8y ago
For a long time you couldn’t switch between google accounts at all except via url manipulation.
8y ago

torgoguys 8y ago

Right, Chrome can't silo things like that between tabs, but can between windows using separate chrome profiles. Not as handy as container tabs but not horrible either. Agree that you shouldn't try mixing personal and Google apps account in the same session...it always breaks eventually. (Why can't Google get that right?)

aaron_m04 8y ago
If you have two windows, each with a different Chrome profile, that counts as a different session, right?
- torgoguys 8y ago
  Correct

Mayzie 8y ago

> the thing that drove me to Firefox was the excellent Account Containers system Though unfortunately, history and bookmarks are not isolated to their individual containers, and Firefox's profile management system is a PITA compared to Chrome's easy button in the title bar.

andrewaylett 8y ago
As a counterpoint, in my use of Containers I'm very happy that history and bookmarks are shared.