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I use Firefox multi-account containers[1] extensively, it's honestly the primary reason I use Firefox these days. The big win for me is that I _hate_ having to

I use Firefox multi-account containers[1] extensively, it's honestly the primary reason I use Firefox these days. The big win for me is that I _hate_ having to use the Google account switcher, so I basically set up a container for each Gmail account (work, personal, old email, etc). The nice bonus feature is you can have certain sites default to containers. I had a paid YouTube account for a while, for example, so having any YouTube link open in my personal account was nice for not getting hit with ads on initial click due to my default Gmail not being the right one. There's also a plugin[2] that will make any new tab default to whatever the first tab listed is. Really great for if you want to have a whole browser window dedicated to one container. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window...

neycoda 6y ago
Why do you hate the Google account switched for Gmail? It keeps all of my Gmail-attached sites isolated in Chrome and is easy to use on desktop (non-existent on Android Chrome unfortunately).
moritonal 6y ago
I use it to split my work and my personal GitHub accounts!
- jacksonlango 6y ago
  Do you use windows? I found that having multiple GitHub account is infuriating on windows because it forces you to go into an obscure security manager to delete a record in order to switch which account your using. Never found a way around it.
  - timvdalen 6y ago
    I had never heard of this so I just tried to reproduce this - I have no trouble logging into two separate GitHub accounts in different Chrome profiles. What makes Firefox profiles different?
    - KallDrexx 6y ago
      I think he's talking about the windows credential manager for HTTPS authorization for cloning/pushing.
      - timvdalen 6y ago
        Aha! I've always just used SSH authorization with GitHub.
        jacksonlango 6y ago
        Oh, I'll give that a try, thanks!
    - worble 6y ago
      I think he means when using git from the command line. Trying to push to your repo will trigger a github sign in process, which will then save the credentials to Windows Credential Manager. Git will then ALWAYS use those from that point on credentials unless you go into the manager and delete them, which is a massive pain if you use multiple github accounts.
- leecb 6y ago
  > GitHub recommends using only one user account to manage both personal and professional repositories. https://github.community/t/using-one-account-for-all-your-projects/10197 https://github.community/t/using-one-account-for-all-your-pr...
  - Drdrdrq 6y ago
    Of course they do. That doesn't make it a good idea though.
  - matsemann 6y ago
    Where I'm contracting now didn't want my account added to their org because it's not a profile picture of me. As the public facing stuff of the account is my personal stuff, I don't want someone else to tell me how it should be. So a new account for this customer it is..
  - leipert 6y ago
    Be careful. If you ever write a commit for an open source project a disgruntled employer could become ideas, depending on your contract.
  - ciriarte 6y ago
    I wish they didn’t do that. Or preferably, I wish they had native “containers” for work and personal repos. Explore is one of my favorite features and now it’s crowded with work related suggestions. It makes it harder to separate the personal/professional persona and interests. This problem also manifests in notifications. I want a clear separation so I can focus on my personal life after work. I’ve thought many times about creating a separate account.
  - moritonal 6y ago
    We actually discussed this for quite a while at work when I pushed us to start contributing to open-source. Mostly it came down to the fact that TfL wished me to keep my work-life and personal-life separate to keep things simple. Reading that back, it doesn't sound so crazy.
  - endgame 6y ago
mackrevinack 6y ago
same here! its the main thing stopping me from switching back to vivaldi thanks for the sticky windows tip
Fats 6y ago
What I've been doing was to set up a browser profile (local) for each main context. If I have a set of work accounts (google, github, etc.), I have a 'work' profile for it. This isolates all cookies related to 'work' at once, as well as bookmarks, saved tabs, extensions, and settings. It's a total context switcher.
- aggronn 6y ago
  I'm also doing this in chrome. I have about 5 different profiles, aliased to things like `chrome-work`, `chrome-personal`, `chrome-dev', etc. I would love to use FF, but iirc FF doesn't provide something like `firefox --profile=someIdentifier` that opens a new window in my desired profile. edit: Apparently this is bad info. I'll have to give it a try again.
  - satya71 6y ago
    It does. `firefox -no-remote -P <profile>`
    - codethief 6y ago
      I used to always include `--no-remote` here but it seems `firefox -P <profile>` now works, too, even when another Firefox instance is already running. Is anyone experiencing the same?
      - quesera 6y ago
        When I last tested, it varied by platform. Linux was happy to open a new instance without the `--new-instance` option (which is implied by `--no-remote`), but macOS required it.
    - tzs 6y ago
      There's also a firefox-bin. Anyone know what the difference between firefox and firefox-bin is nowadays? I believe that in the far past firefox-bin was the firefox binary, and firefox was a shell script that would do things like notice you already have a firefox-bin instance open and signal it to open a new window rather than launching a new firefox-bin instance. But nowadays, firefox and firefox-bin seem almost the same. On the current release version on Mac, for example, both are binaries, with firefox-bin 40320 bytes and firefox just 16 bytes bigger. Info.plist in /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents gives firefox is the executable to run. I'm not sure what role firefox-bin has now, if any. Grabbing the source and building it myself results in firefox and firefox-bin matching.
typicalbender 6y ago
Is the Firefox implementation different from Chrome? I don't think Chrome allows you to default links to specific profiles but I have used this feature in Chrome for a while to separate work and personal profiles to sandbox Chrome instances.
- staz 6y ago
  afaik profiles in chrome work for the whole instance (like in firefox) but Container work on a per tab basis
  - typicalbender 6y ago
    Oh I see interesting. That's correct in Chrome you get an entirely separate instance of Chrome with the new profile. Thanks!
    - mcny 6y ago
      and to add to mmcclure's point I do all my shopping in the shopping container. I have the deals website I frequent set to the shopping container so if I open slickdeals.net in any tab, I get to the shopping container. One quality of life change I encourage is go to manage containers and select "Select a container for each new tab". Then you can pretend the firefox tab without a container even exists (caveat: does not work with ctrl + t shortcut for new tab) > The nice bonus feature is you can have certain sites default to containers. I had a paid YouTube account for a while, for example, so having any YouTube link open in my personal account was nice for not getting hit with ads on initial click due to my default Gmail not being the right one.
  - npteljes 6y ago
    That's exactly right. And Firefox has that profile functionality too.
Nightshaxx 6y ago
That second extension is a great idea! Thanks for sharing!
phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
I use Chrome on Windows 10 at work because we're a gsuite shop and that's just what we do (I don't do personal things on company resources). I use Firefox on Debian everywhere else because Fuck Google.
- dr-detroit 6y ago
  whatabout systemd and FF is bankrolled by the googs as well
kmundnic 6y ago
How do you create different containers for different Gmail accounts, since the beginning of the url will be the same?
- im3w1l 6y ago
  By not associating the domain with the container, and instead juggling it manually.
Timpy 6y ago
Along with the Facebook Container I use multi-account containers to keep a Google, Microsoft, and Amazon container as well. I included all of their children companies in the parent containers (like GitHub in Microsoft, YouTube in Google). It's sobering seeing how much of the internet shows up in one of these four containers.
- neltnerb 6y ago
  I use multi-account containers and temporary containers so that all my new tabs are isolated. Is there any reason to also use facebook container if you already have multi-account containers?
  - RMPR 6y ago
    > I use multi-account containers and temporary containers so that all my new tabs are isolated Worth mentioning that with the addon cookie auto-delete, you can more or less emulate temporary containers.
    - smichel17 6y ago
      Temporary containers has a plethora of settings for when to open a new container. For example, I have a rule enabled that will open links in a new temporary container when they leave the current one. That's a terrible explanation, so let me give an example to make it clear: - I have a GitHub container - github.com and gist.github.com are set to always open in the GitHub container - Say I am currently browsing github.com in the GitHub container. - If I click a link to a domain other than [gist.]github.com, instead of navigating my current tab to that url, the url will open in a new tab & new temporary container This is more powerful than simply persisting cookies from github.com -- I'm keeping GitHub's cookies, but only in the github container. It's almost like first party isolation, but a little weaker (unless you enable the setting where any link to a different domain will open in a new container), and I have the ability to group sites that would break with 1st party isolation by opening them in the same container.
      - 6y ago
remram 6y ago
Damn I also hate the Google accounts mayhem. I will look into those containers. Right now I manually type ?authuser=1 into my URLs to have Google Docs open in the right account, but this breaks when I restart the browser and the page reloads with the wrong account... Why Google removes this parameter from URLs after loading is beyond me.
- dirtnugget 6y ago
  It feels like multi-user management with google is a feature which was not really considered from the start and never become important enough to refactor the whole thing.
  - basch 6y ago
    Do they need to refactor much though? I would they could fix it in Chrome, and accomplish basically the same thing.
    - dirtnugget 6y ago
      I have no idea how the product is structured, but I do know that many other services have a similar issue. Heck, we’re using outlook at one of my customers and I can’t even open a second tab in 2020. It will just block the UI telling me there is another tab open.
sleavey 6y ago
Does this work with Firefox Sync? I'd love to have different bookmarks/cookies/accounts/etc. for work and home but use the same sync account - sometimes I work from home and want to use my work profile, but also don't want my home bookmarks showing up when I share my screen at work.
- nunez 6y ago
  MAC works with Firefox Sync, yes.
  - utucuro 6y ago
    Only partially; Containers get synced, but site to container assignments do not get synced.
- rustyminnow 6y ago
  Containers won't give you two sets of bookmarks, but if you go to about:profiles, you can set up two accounts for separate bookmarks.
  - sleavey 6y ago
    Physical accounts in different directories inside ~/.mozilla/firefox/? Those don't get synced to the same account as far as I know.
nunez 6y ago
Multi-Account Containers with Containerize is an unbeatable combo. Until Chrome gets something like this (I doubt it), I'm never leaving Firefox because of it.
- jedberg 6y ago
  What does Containerize gain you over Multi-account containers? Is the pattern matching more robust?
  - mook 6y ago
    (I also use Containerise) In my experience that had better support for per-eTLD temporary containers, so that each site can have its own, and the data can be discarded relatively soon. I also have more permanent containers for things that I want to be able to persist (e.g. work uses SSO so I need to link multiple sites together to log in). When I used it I found the management in Multi-Account Containers to be onerous (I don't believe it could do automatic containers based on eTLD).
    - Mandatum 6y ago
      Oh wow, okay this makes things a little easier. I've always struggled with logging in as the SSO-flow has domains that I haven't added to the "Always open in X tab". Hopefully the functionality gets incorporated into the MAC addon eventually! .. I say hopefully, man I feel guilty getting so much use out of these addons when I could be actively contributing. Fuck it, donating.. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
    - utucuro 6y ago
      This is going to take care of my biggest gripe with Multi-Account Containers; it leaks cookies to the default container if you open the site management list because it looks up favicons each time. I just tested Containerise and multi-container cookie jars, it does not leak cookies with this. Finally, painless container management!
- mey 6y ago
lern_too_spel 6y ago
The worst thing about the Google account switcher is logging into some third party sites sometimes just uses the first logged in account instead of showing the account switcher, so I can't log into the correct account without logging out of all the Google accounts.
shawnb576 6y ago
Agree that containers are Firefox #1 killer feature and incredibly useful.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I used to have 4 or 5 profiles for firefox for various accounts and situations and containers let me leave all that mess behind. It's pretty awesome and I wish more people knew about it. It's one of the things I bring up to privacy oriented and people who need a lot of different logins.
  - yeswecatan 6y ago
    Is there a way to have multiple profiles open in separate windows but inly a single instance of Firefox, similar to Chrome?
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      I think you can do it from command line. Set up a few profiles (2 to start with/test) and run them from command line. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/62.0.3202.58/docs/user_data_dir.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/62.0.32...
Mandatum 6y ago
Also adding to this - you can set up container-specific proxies with "Container proxy" addon. This is great for when you want to ensure your connection is going over a private network, for instance if you have a regular torrent website (or porn or whatever) - you can configure it to automatically open in a container, like this Facebook addon - but when it opens - it will only connect to the endpoint over a proxy. If you're not connected, it fails. Works really well with Mullvad which has a SOCKS proxy setup only available when connected. Great for work connections too, I've setup all work/business websites to auto-open in a "work" container which I've created a local bridge proxy for to ensure my work connections are always over the corporate VPN. This is also really good if you consult or work with many customers - you can start to build a catalogue of containers with specific settings for those customers. Container Proxy addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-proxy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-pro...
- hannibalhorn 6y ago
  I use the same setup (mullvad + container proxy) and can't praise it enough. I just keep a mullvad connection open on my router and only route the proxy IPs through it. Great for all kinds of silly GeoIP restrictions, too - in my part of the world, homedepot.com just spits out "access denied", a foodnetwork.com recipe you find in search results just redirects you to the tudiscovery.com homepage, etc.
  - bogomipz 6y ago
    >"I just keep a mullvad connection open on my router and only route the proxy IPs through it.' I'm interested in your setup. Do you configure your router to have a point to point tunnel with Mullvad then? I didn't know this was a thing. Do you then just have a separate container proxy for each GeoIP region you want to access?
    - Mandatum 6y ago
      This'll help you: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dd-wrt-routers-and-mullvad-vpn/ https://mullvad.net/en/help/dd-wrt-routers-and-mullvad-vpn/ For Geo-IP, unfortunately unless you have some sort of automation to reconfigure the OpenVPN settings on your router - this will only work with 1 configuration. They may be alluding to using the VPN to connect to another country where they're not getting weird as fuck redirects and shit content. Although just as I wrote that, I'm expecting a dd-wrt/browser addon will probably support this somewhere - or at least as a script on Linux.
npteljes 6y ago
I also love Temporary Containers, so each of my tabs can be a fresh sheet. Also cookies and much else gets purged after I close them.
- gaff33 6y ago
  I've been wondering if such an extension exists! Thanks for telling me about it.
rattray 6y ago
Would you be willing to share your config? Last I checked, I'd have to enumerate every Google domain and subdomain, which just seemed like too much work. But if others have already done this, itd be easy to just use theirs.
- rhamzeh 6y ago
  https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai... You can use this. It's a fork of Facebook Container, but for Google. This one is a fork for Amazon https://github.com/krober/contain-amazon https://github.com/krober/contain-amazon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/contain-amazon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/contain-amazo... Twitter: https://github.com/v1shwa/contain-twitter https://github.com/v1shwa/contain-twitter https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-conta... There's a few more too
tomrod 6y ago
I didn't know about the default containers. Thanks, that's great to know!
ww520 6y ago
Tooting my own horn :). Session Boss [1] saves the container information as part of the session and can restore the tabs in their respective containers. I use it to maintain multiple Gmail accounts and other email accounts in different containers. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-boss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-boss/
- artificial 6y ago
  Sweet, I'll give it a go. I'm a huge fan of being able to export sessions, save them, query and suspend tabs.
- SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
  That looks like a useful extension, just installed it. Good for those times I want to Undo Close Tab for something 10 tabs ago
- AnonC 6y ago
  The add-on page for this says it was last updated in June 2019. Just wanted to check if it's still compatible and has no issues with all the changes in Firefox for more than a year now.
  - ww520 6y ago
    Still works fine. I have a large pending change which is risky and I want to do more testing before releasing, but got busy with other stuff and no update has been pushed out for a while.
- baumandm 6y ago
  I'm a bit late to this thread, but thanks for making & sharing this extension. It looks amazing!
livscholes 6y ago
Didn't know you could do this with Firefox. Thanks for the tip! Curious — have you ever heard of Shift (tryshift.com)? It pretty much does the same thing, but with everything (Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc.). I use it at work so that I don't have to sign in and out of all my Google accounts. It's pretty unreal.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Welcome to HN. Is this you?[1] You should disclose your job is promoting the company you mentioned if it is. I hope it isn't or you just forgot. Astroturfing erodes trust between people and makes the world worse. [1] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/olivia-scholes https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/olivia-scholes
  - lucasverra 6y ago
    Good catch !
neogodless 6y ago
I'm confused. Containers work by URL. How do you use a different container per Google account?
- discordance 6y ago
  Firefox containers isolate all cookies, site associated credentials and cached content
  - neogodless 6y ago
    Right I guess I mean you can't isolate all Google sites to one container but also split your Google accounts across multiple containers.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  The Facebook Container extension is special, it does a bunch of work to put all of Facebook and only Facebook inside the Facebook Container. Bits of Facebook trying to peak through outside Facebook (e.g. tracking pixels) are elided entirely. Which is exactly what I want. But ordinarily that's not the behaviour you get from a Firefox container. e.g. I have that Facebook Container, and I also have a Slack container I just put together in the usual way by opening my Slack session (it's for the main social group I hang out with, during the pandemic) inside a Container with a pink theme and icon. Suppose three friends send me a funny Youtube video of kittens, one sends it on Slack, one on Facebook, one literally sends me a postcard with the URL on it. In Facebook, it's inside the Facebook container. Since the Facebook Container has no idea who I am, Youtube presents adverts and of course there's no way to add the video to my "Fun kitten videos" list. But if I tell Youtube to open this now the tab is not Facebook, a no-referrer link opens with the URL and now in my default context which has Youtube Premium, so there are no adverts and I can add this to my lists. As far as Facebook is concerned I apparently just left. Unless Google tells them I watched that video they are none the wiser. Slack is inside the Slack container. So again, no Youtube account, adverts. But if I open the Youtube page that's still inside the Slack container, so still no Youtube account. I need to explicitly get the URL and paste it into a not Slack tab to get my default context. The link from the postcard obviously I get to choose which context to type it into the URL bar, although maybe the UX of typing random Youtube URLs in isn't great.
dheera 6y ago
I tried it but it doesn't seem to work. I clicked a new "Work" container, then went to mail.google.com, and it instantly took me out of the container. And then when I click back to the work container and try to access mail.google.com I get: "400. That’s an error. The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That’s all we know." Bug? It seems like a really messy UI. Why can't they make Multi-Account Containers work just like Facebook Container? Or have make 1 window == 1 container?
- mattmanser 6y ago
  You can actually have different profiles for Chrome which achieve exactly the same thing.
  - daveFNbuck 6y ago
    Can you have dozens of different profiles open at the same time in different tabs of the same window?
    - blackearl 6y ago
      Yes, I use it at home but also a lot at work. Opening personal account and admin accounts in a bunch of different tabs for a bunch of different sites. Makes it super easy, no need to log in and out throughout the day. I have users that also will have our O365/Okta accounts as well as client O365/Okta accounts. Containers make it a cinch to keep everything separate and logged in at the same time.
      - dheera 6y ago
        It seems that one could also run multiple instances of Chrome or Chromium inside docker containers with X11 forwarding.
      - daveFNbuck 6y ago
        I was asking about Chrome profiles, not Firefox containers. I use dozens of Firefox containers already, and it's my understanding that Chrome profiles aren't a good substitute because you can only use one at a time.
dngray 6y ago
I really like "Temporary Containers" https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/temporary-container... which is a really useful privacy-enhancing usage of the containers API. https://medium.com/@stoically/enhance-your-privacy-in-firefox-with-temporary-containers-33925cd6cd21 https://medium.com/@stoically/enhance-your-privacy-in-firefo...
- lucasverra 6y ago
  isn't this the same as a private tab ?
  - hawski 6y ago
    Private tab? Do you mean private window? Or is there some other feature/extension? The temporary containers extension is creating a temporary container with each newly opened tab. It uses same container for tabs opened from existing tabs.
  - y7 6y ago
    All tabs opened in private windows share the same "container", which gets cleared once you close the last private tab. With temporary containers, all your tabs are in independent containers.
    - lucasverra 6y ago
      good to know thanks
jethro_tell 6y ago
I log into roughly 20 AWS accounts/day. Container tabs make that work. I can compare things side by side or just work on two tasks at once.
- turdnagel 6y ago
  Holy moly, why 20 accounts?
  - abrookewood 6y ago
    It's not that unusual to use separate AWS accounts as blast-barriers. I.e. they contain the damage that might occur due to a leak etc. I typically use 2 (prod & non-prod) for each major product/offering, plus a centralised one to manage policies, billing etc for all the sub accounts. They add up pretty quickly.
    - jethro_tell 6y ago
      I use an account for $service-$stage-$region-<$function> then I run most services in every available region so: main-service_prod_us-east-1_dataStore main-service_prod_us-east-1 main-service_test_us-east-1_dataStore main-service_test_us-east-1 main-service_beta_us-east-1_dataStore main-service_beta_us-east-1 * regions Adds up pretty quickly.
  - LilBytes 6y ago
    My employer has accounts in the hundreds... Similar to OP you're replying to, I use Firefox Containers to open separate accounts to open independent windows from my Identity Provider when I need to be in more than one account at a time.
  - dheera 6y ago
    AWS credits? You can get a bunch of free credits for each account, and then build an abstraction around boto3 to make 20 accounts look like 1 account to you.
    - 6y ago
KingFelix 6y ago
This is great, I have been using firefox forever never knew this. Thanks for posting!
plat12 6y ago
I use private windows in Safari, where each tab automatically behaves like its own container.
- nsomaru 6y ago
  It’s not the same. All my uMatrix anc cookie auto delete rules are container specific. Private windows are like very simple containers that destroy themselves once closed. AFAICT private Firefox windows are also part of the same container so you don’t get true separation (can’t open multiple Firefox private windows and log into different google accounts — does that work in Safari?)
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    Yes it works in Safari private tabs. I do that sort of thing regularly.
jmiskovic 6y ago
I just recently discovered a tip that finally made Firefox multiple windows usable. When you want to restart the browser and save tabs across all windows, you use Quit command from menu (or Ctrl+Q) and not the window X button (Alt+F4).
- kbenson 6y ago
  Ctrl-shift-n will reopen a closed window (with all the tabs it had) just like ctrl-shift-n will reopen a closed tab. Try it a few times after closing multiple firefox windows with multiple tabs each if they don't come up automatically on start.
  - ComodoHacker 6y ago
    You mean "ctrl-shift-T will reopen a closed tab".
    - kbenson 6y ago
      Yes, my mistake. That's pretty obvious in context what I meant to someone that already knew it, but that doesn't help those that didn't know about that feature, so thanks. :)
smusamashah 6y ago
Do multi account containers work with SSBs (site specific browsers / chrome like apps for specific websites)?

neycoda 6y ago

Why do you hate the Google account switched for Gmail? It keeps all of my Gmail-attached sites isolated in Chrome and is easy to use on desktop (non-existent on Android Chrome unfortunately).

moritonal 6y ago

I use it to split my work and my personal GitHub accounts!

jacksonlango 6y ago
Do you use windows? I found that having multiple GitHub account is infuriating on windows because it forces you to go into an obscure security manager to delete a record in order to switch which account your using. Never found a way around it.
- timvdalen 6y ago
  I had never heard of this so I just tried to reproduce this - I have no trouble logging into two separate GitHub accounts in different Chrome profiles. What makes Firefox profiles different?
  - KallDrexx 6y ago
    I think he's talking about the windows credential manager for HTTPS authorization for cloning/pushing.
    - timvdalen 6y ago
      Aha! I've always just used SSH authorization with GitHub.
      - jacksonlango 6y ago
        Oh, I'll give that a try, thanks!
  - worble 6y ago
    I think he means when using git from the command line. Trying to push to your repo will trigger a github sign in process, which will then save the credentials to Windows Credential Manager. Git will then ALWAYS use those from that point on credentials unless you go into the manager and delete them, which is a massive pain if you use multiple github accounts.
leecb 6y ago
> GitHub recommends using only one user account to manage both personal and professional repositories. https://github.community/t/using-one-account-for-all-your-projects/10197 https://github.community/t/using-one-account-for-all-your-pr...
- Drdrdrq 6y ago
  Of course they do. That doesn't make it a good idea though.
- matsemann 6y ago
  Where I'm contracting now didn't want my account added to their org because it's not a profile picture of me. As the public facing stuff of the account is my personal stuff, I don't want someone else to tell me how it should be. So a new account for this customer it is..
- leipert 6y ago
  Be careful. If you ever write a commit for an open source project a disgruntled employer could become ideas, depending on your contract.
- ciriarte 6y ago
  I wish they didn’t do that. Or preferably, I wish they had native “containers” for work and personal repos. Explore is one of my favorite features and now it’s crowded with work related suggestions. It makes it harder to separate the personal/professional persona and interests. This problem also manifests in notifications. I want a clear separation so I can focus on my personal life after work. I’ve thought many times about creating a separate account.
- moritonal 6y ago
  We actually discussed this for quite a while at work when I pushed us to start contributing to open-source. Mostly it came down to the fact that TfL wished me to keep my work-life and personal-life separate to keep things simple. Reading that back, it doesn't sound so crazy.
- endgame 6y ago

mackrevinack 6y ago

same here! its the main thing stopping me from switching back to vivaldi thanks for the sticky windows tip

Fats 6y ago

What I've been doing was to set up a browser profile (local) for each main context. If I have a set of work accounts (google, github, etc.), I have a 'work' profile for it. This isolates all cookies related to 'work' at once, as well as bookmarks, saved tabs, extensions, and settings. It's a total context switcher.

aggronn 6y ago
I'm also doing this in chrome. I have about 5 different profiles, aliased to things like `chrome-work`, `chrome-personal`, `chrome-dev', etc. I would love to use FF, but iirc FF doesn't provide something like `firefox --profile=someIdentifier` that opens a new window in my desired profile. edit: Apparently this is bad info. I'll have to give it a try again.
- satya71 6y ago
  It does. `firefox -no-remote -P <profile>`
  - codethief 6y ago
    I used to always include `--no-remote` here but it seems `firefox -P <profile>` now works, too, even when another Firefox instance is already running. Is anyone experiencing the same?
    - quesera 6y ago
      When I last tested, it varied by platform. Linux was happy to open a new instance without the `--new-instance` option (which is implied by `--no-remote`), but macOS required it.
  - tzs 6y ago
    There's also a firefox-bin. Anyone know what the difference between firefox and firefox-bin is nowadays? I believe that in the far past firefox-bin was the firefox binary, and firefox was a shell script that would do things like notice you already have a firefox-bin instance open and signal it to open a new window rather than launching a new firefox-bin instance. But nowadays, firefox and firefox-bin seem almost the same. On the current release version on Mac, for example, both are binaries, with firefox-bin 40320 bytes and firefox just 16 bytes bigger. Info.plist in /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents gives firefox is the executable to run. I'm not sure what role firefox-bin has now, if any. Grabbing the source and building it myself results in firefox and firefox-bin matching.

typicalbender 6y ago

Is the Firefox implementation different from Chrome? I don't think Chrome allows you to default links to specific profiles but I have used this feature in Chrome for a while to separate work and personal profiles to sandbox Chrome instances.

staz 6y ago
afaik profiles in chrome work for the whole instance (like in firefox) but Container work on a per tab basis
- typicalbender 6y ago
  Oh I see interesting. That's correct in Chrome you get an entirely separate instance of Chrome with the new profile. Thanks!
  - mcny 6y ago
    and to add to mmcclure's point I do all my shopping in the shopping container. I have the deals website I frequent set to the shopping container so if I open slickdeals.net in any tab, I get to the shopping container. One quality of life change I encourage is go to manage containers and select "Select a container for each new tab". Then you can pretend the firefox tab without a container even exists (caveat: does not work with ctrl + t shortcut for new tab) > The nice bonus feature is you can have certain sites default to containers. I had a paid YouTube account for a while, for example, so having any YouTube link open in my personal account was nice for not getting hit with ads on initial click due to my default Gmail not being the right one.
- npteljes 6y ago
  That's exactly right. And Firefox has that profile functionality too.

Nightshaxx 6y ago

That second extension is a great idea! Thanks for sharing!

phjesusthatguy3 6y ago

I use Chrome on Windows 10 at work because we're a gsuite shop and that's just what we do (I don't do personal things on company resources). I use Firefox on Debian everywhere else because Fuck Google.

dr-detroit 6y ago
whatabout systemd and FF is bankrolled by the googs as well

kmundnic 6y ago

How do you create different containers for different Gmail accounts, since the beginning of the url will be the same?

im3w1l 6y ago
By not associating the domain with the container, and instead juggling it manually.

Timpy 6y ago

Along with the Facebook Container I use multi-account containers to keep a Google, Microsoft, and Amazon container as well. I included all of their children companies in the parent containers (like GitHub in Microsoft, YouTube in Google). It's sobering seeing how much of the internet shows up in one of these four containers.

neltnerb 6y ago
I use multi-account containers and temporary containers so that all my new tabs are isolated. Is there any reason to also use facebook container if you already have multi-account containers?
- RMPR 6y ago
  > I use multi-account containers and temporary containers so that all my new tabs are isolated Worth mentioning that with the addon cookie auto-delete, you can more or less emulate temporary containers.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    Temporary containers has a plethora of settings for when to open a new container. For example, I have a rule enabled that will open links in a new temporary container when they leave the current one. That's a terrible explanation, so let me give an example to make it clear: - I have a GitHub container - github.com and gist.github.com are set to always open in the GitHub container - Say I am currently browsing github.com in the GitHub container. - If I click a link to a domain other than [gist.]github.com, instead of navigating my current tab to that url, the url will open in a new tab & new temporary container This is more powerful than simply persisting cookies from github.com -- I'm keeping GitHub's cookies, but only in the github container. It's almost like first party isolation, but a little weaker (unless you enable the setting where any link to a different domain will open in a new container), and I have the ability to group sites that would break with 1st party isolation by opening them in the same container.
    - 6y ago

remram 6y ago

Damn I also hate the Google accounts mayhem. I will look into those containers. Right now I manually type ?authuser=1 into my URLs to have Google Docs open in the right account, but this breaks when I restart the browser and the page reloads with the wrong account... Why Google removes this parameter from URLs after loading is beyond me.

dirtnugget 6y ago
It feels like multi-user management with google is a feature which was not really considered from the start and never become important enough to refactor the whole thing.
- basch 6y ago
  Do they need to refactor much though? I would they could fix it in Chrome, and accomplish basically the same thing.
  - dirtnugget 6y ago
    I have no idea how the product is structured, but I do know that many other services have a similar issue. Heck, we’re using outlook at one of my customers and I can’t even open a second tab in 2020. It will just block the UI telling me there is another tab open.

sleavey 6y ago

Does this work with Firefox Sync? I'd love to have different bookmarks/cookies/accounts/etc. for work and home but use the same sync account - sometimes I work from home and want to use my work profile, but also don't want my home bookmarks showing up when I share my screen at work.

nunez 6y ago
MAC works with Firefox Sync, yes.
- utucuro 6y ago
  Only partially; Containers get synced, but site to container assignments do not get synced.
rustyminnow 6y ago
Containers won't give you two sets of bookmarks, but if you go to about:profiles, you can set up two accounts for separate bookmarks.
- sleavey 6y ago
  Physical accounts in different directories inside ~/.mozilla/firefox/? Those don't get synced to the same account as far as I know.

nunez 6y ago

Multi-Account Containers with Containerize is an unbeatable combo. Until Chrome gets something like this (I doubt it), I'm never leaving Firefox because of it.

jedberg 6y ago
What does Containerize gain you over Multi-account containers? Is the pattern matching more robust?
- mook 6y ago
  (I also use Containerise) In my experience that had better support for per-eTLD temporary containers, so that each site can have its own, and the data can be discarded relatively soon. I also have more permanent containers for things that I want to be able to persist (e.g. work uses SSO so I need to link multiple sites together to log in). When I used it I found the management in Multi-Account Containers to be onerous (I don't believe it could do automatic containers based on eTLD).
  - Mandatum 6y ago
    Oh wow, okay this makes things a little easier. I've always struggled with logging in as the SSO-flow has domains that I haven't added to the "Always open in X tab". Hopefully the functionality gets incorporated into the MAC addon eventually! .. I say hopefully, man I feel guilty getting so much use out of these addons when I could be actively contributing. Fuck it, donating.. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
  - utucuro 6y ago
    This is going to take care of my biggest gripe with Multi-Account Containers; it leaks cookies to the default container if you open the site management list because it looks up favicons each time. I just tested Containerise and multi-container cookie jars, it does not leak cookies with this. Finally, painless container management!
mey 6y ago

lern_too_spel 6y ago

The worst thing about the Google account switcher is logging into some third party sites sometimes just uses the first logged in account instead of showing the account switcher, so I can't log into the correct account without logging out of all the Google accounts.

shawnb576 6y ago

Agree that containers are Firefox #1 killer feature and incredibly useful.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
I used to have 4 or 5 profiles for firefox for various accounts and situations and containers let me leave all that mess behind. It's pretty awesome and I wish more people knew about it. It's one of the things I bring up to privacy oriented and people who need a lot of different logins.
- yeswecatan 6y ago
  Is there a way to have multiple profiles open in separate windows but inly a single instance of Firefox, similar to Chrome?
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    I think you can do it from command line. Set up a few profiles (2 to start with/test) and run them from command line. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/62.0.3202.58/docs/user_data_dir.md https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/62.0.32...

Mandatum 6y ago

Also adding to this - you can set up container-specific proxies with "Container proxy" addon. This is great for when you want to ensure your connection is going over a private network, for instance if you have a regular torrent website (or porn or whatever) - you can configure it to automatically open in a container, like this Facebook addon - but when it opens - it will only connect to the endpoint over a proxy. If you're not connected, it fails. Works really well with Mullvad which has a SOCKS proxy setup only available when connected. Great for work connections too, I've setup all work/business websites to auto-open in a "work" container which I've created a local bridge proxy for to ensure my work connections are always over the corporate VPN. This is also really good if you consult or work with many customers - you can start to build a catalogue of containers with specific settings for those customers. Container Proxy addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-proxy/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-pro...

hannibalhorn 6y ago
I use the same setup (mullvad + container proxy) and can't praise it enough. I just keep a mullvad connection open on my router and only route the proxy IPs through it. Great for all kinds of silly GeoIP restrictions, too - in my part of the world, homedepot.com just spits out "access denied", a foodnetwork.com recipe you find in search results just redirects you to the tudiscovery.com homepage, etc.
- bogomipz 6y ago
  >"I just keep a mullvad connection open on my router and only route the proxy IPs through it.' I'm interested in your setup. Do you configure your router to have a point to point tunnel with Mullvad then? I didn't know this was a thing. Do you then just have a separate container proxy for each GeoIP region you want to access?
  - Mandatum 6y ago
    This'll help you: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dd-wrt-routers-and-mullvad-vpn/ https://mullvad.net/en/help/dd-wrt-routers-and-mullvad-vpn/ For Geo-IP, unfortunately unless you have some sort of automation to reconfigure the OpenVPN settings on your router - this will only work with 1 configuration. They may be alluding to using the VPN to connect to another country where they're not getting weird as fuck redirects and shit content. Although just as I wrote that, I'm expecting a dd-wrt/browser addon will probably support this somewhere - or at least as a script on Linux.

npteljes 6y ago

I also love Temporary Containers, so each of my tabs can be a fresh sheet. Also cookies and much else gets purged after I close them.

gaff33 6y ago
I've been wondering if such an extension exists! Thanks for telling me about it.

rattray 6y ago

Would you be willing to share your config? Last I checked, I'd have to enumerate every Google domain and subdomain, which just seemed like too much work. But if others have already done this, itd be easy to just use theirs.

rhamzeh 6y ago
https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai... You can use this. It's a fork of Facebook Container, but for Google. This one is a fork for Amazon https://github.com/krober/contain-amazon https://github.com/krober/contain-amazon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/contain-amazon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/contain-amazo... Twitter: https://github.com/v1shwa/contain-twitter https://github.com/v1shwa/contain-twitter https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/twitter-conta... There's a few more too

tomrod 6y ago

I didn't know about the default containers. Thanks, that's great to know!

ww520 6y ago

Tooting my own horn :). Session Boss [1] saves the container information as part of the session and can restore the tabs in their respective containers. I use it to maintain multiple Gmail accounts and other email accounts in different containers. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-boss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-boss/

artificial 6y ago
Sweet, I'll give it a go. I'm a huge fan of being able to export sessions, save them, query and suspend tabs.
SturgeonsLaw 6y ago
That looks like a useful extension, just installed it. Good for those times I want to Undo Close Tab for something 10 tabs ago
AnonC 6y ago
The add-on page for this says it was last updated in June 2019. Just wanted to check if it's still compatible and has no issues with all the changes in Firefox for more than a year now.
- ww520 6y ago
  Still works fine. I have a large pending change which is risky and I want to do more testing before releasing, but got busy with other stuff and no update has been pushed out for a while.
baumandm 6y ago
I'm a bit late to this thread, but thanks for making & sharing this extension. It looks amazing!

livscholes 6y ago

Didn't know you could do this with Firefox. Thanks for the tip! Curious — have you ever heard of Shift (tryshift.com)? It pretty much does the same thing, but with everything (Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc.). I use it at work so that I don't have to sign in and out of all my Google accounts. It's pretty unreal.

pseudalopex 6y ago
Welcome to HN. Is this you?[1] You should disclose your job is promoting the company you mentioned if it is. I hope it isn't or you just forgot. Astroturfing erodes trust between people and makes the world worse. [1] https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/olivia-scholes https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/olivia-scholes
- lucasverra 6y ago
  Good catch !

neogodless 6y ago

I'm confused. Containers work by URL. How do you use a different container per Google account?

discordance 6y ago
Firefox containers isolate all cookies, site associated credentials and cached content
- neogodless 6y ago
  Right I guess I mean you can't isolate all Google sites to one container but also split your Google accounts across multiple containers.
tialaramex 6y ago
The Facebook Container extension is special, it does a bunch of work to put all of Facebook and only Facebook inside the Facebook Container. Bits of Facebook trying to peak through outside Facebook (e.g. tracking pixels) are elided entirely. Which is exactly what I want. But ordinarily that's not the behaviour you get from a Firefox container. e.g. I have that Facebook Container, and I also have a Slack container I just put together in the usual way by opening my Slack session (it's for the main social group I hang out with, during the pandemic) inside a Container with a pink theme and icon. Suppose three friends send me a funny Youtube video of kittens, one sends it on Slack, one on Facebook, one literally sends me a postcard with the URL on it. In Facebook, it's inside the Facebook container. Since the Facebook Container has no idea who I am, Youtube presents adverts and of course there's no way to add the video to my "Fun kitten videos" list. But if I tell Youtube to open this now the tab is not Facebook, a no-referrer link opens with the URL and now in my default context which has Youtube Premium, so there are no adverts and I can add this to my lists. As far as Facebook is concerned I apparently just left. Unless Google tells them I watched that video they are none the wiser. Slack is inside the Slack container. So again, no Youtube account, adverts. But if I open the Youtube page that's still inside the Slack container, so still no Youtube account. I need to explicitly get the URL and paste it into a not Slack tab to get my default context. The link from the postcard obviously I get to choose which context to type it into the URL bar, although maybe the UX of typing random Youtube URLs in isn't great.

dheera 6y ago

I tried it but it doesn't seem to work. I clicked a new "Work" container, then went to mail.google.com, and it instantly took me out of the container. And then when I click back to the work container and try to access mail.google.com I get: "400. That’s an error. The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That’s all we know." Bug? It seems like a really messy UI. Why can't they make Multi-Account Containers work just like Facebook Container? Or have make 1 window == 1 container?

mattmanser 6y ago
You can actually have different profiles for Chrome which achieve exactly the same thing.
- daveFNbuck 6y ago
  Can you have dozens of different profiles open at the same time in different tabs of the same window?
  - blackearl 6y ago
    Yes, I use it at home but also a lot at work. Opening personal account and admin accounts in a bunch of different tabs for a bunch of different sites. Makes it super easy, no need to log in and out throughout the day. I have users that also will have our O365/Okta accounts as well as client O365/Okta accounts. Containers make it a cinch to keep everything separate and logged in at the same time.
    - dheera 6y ago
      It seems that one could also run multiple instances of Chrome or Chromium inside docker containers with X11 forwarding.
    - daveFNbuck 6y ago
      I was asking about Chrome profiles, not Firefox containers. I use dozens of Firefox containers already, and it's my understanding that Chrome profiles aren't a good substitute because you can only use one at a time.

dngray 6y ago

I really like "Temporary Containers" https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/temporary-container... which is a really useful privacy-enhancing usage of the containers API. https://medium.com/@stoically/enhance-your-privacy-in-firefox-with-temporary-containers-33925cd6cd21 https://medium.com/@stoically/enhance-your-privacy-in-firefo...

lucasverra 6y ago
isn't this the same as a private tab ?
- hawski 6y ago
  Private tab? Do you mean private window? Or is there some other feature/extension? The temporary containers extension is creating a temporary container with each newly opened tab. It uses same container for tabs opened from existing tabs.
- y7 6y ago
  All tabs opened in private windows share the same "container", which gets cleared once you close the last private tab. With temporary containers, all your tabs are in independent containers.
  - lucasverra 6y ago
    good to know thanks

jethro_tell 6y ago

I log into roughly 20 AWS accounts/day. Container tabs make that work. I can compare things side by side or just work on two tasks at once.

turdnagel 6y ago
Holy moly, why 20 accounts?
- abrookewood 6y ago
  It's not that unusual to use separate AWS accounts as blast-barriers. I.e. they contain the damage that might occur due to a leak etc. I typically use 2 (prod & non-prod) for each major product/offering, plus a centralised one to manage policies, billing etc for all the sub accounts. They add up pretty quickly.
  - jethro_tell 6y ago
    I use an account for $service-$stage-$region-<$function> then I run most services in every available region so: main-service_prod_us-east-1_dataStore main-service_prod_us-east-1 main-service_test_us-east-1_dataStore main-service_test_us-east-1 main-service_beta_us-east-1_dataStore main-service_beta_us-east-1 * regions Adds up pretty quickly.
- LilBytes 6y ago
  My employer has accounts in the hundreds... Similar to OP you're replying to, I use Firefox Containers to open separate accounts to open independent windows from my Identity Provider when I need to be in more than one account at a time.
- dheera 6y ago
  AWS credits? You can get a bunch of free credits for each account, and then build an abstraction around boto3 to make 20 accounts look like 1 account to you.
  - 6y ago

KingFelix 6y ago

This is great, I have been using firefox forever never knew this. Thanks for posting!

plat12 6y ago

I use private windows in Safari, where each tab automatically behaves like its own container.

nsomaru 6y ago
It’s not the same. All my uMatrix anc cookie auto delete rules are container specific. Private windows are like very simple containers that destroy themselves once closed. AFAICT private Firefox windows are also part of the same container so you don’t get true separation (can’t open multiple Firefox private windows and log into different google accounts — does that work in Safari?)
- jtbayly 6y ago
  Yes it works in Safari private tabs. I do that sort of thing regularly.

jmiskovic 6y ago

I just recently discovered a tip that finally made Firefox multiple windows usable. When you want to restart the browser and save tabs across all windows, you use Quit command from menu (or Ctrl+Q) and not the window X button (Alt+F4).

kbenson 6y ago
Ctrl-shift-n will reopen a closed window (with all the tabs it had) just like ctrl-shift-n will reopen a closed tab. Try it a few times after closing multiple firefox windows with multiple tabs each if they don't come up automatically on start.
- ComodoHacker 6y ago
  You mean "ctrl-shift-T will reopen a closed tab".
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Yes, my mistake. That's pretty obvious in context what I meant to someone that already knew it, but that doesn't help those that didn't know about that feature, so thanks. :)

smusamashah 6y ago

Do multi account containers work with SSBs (site specific browsers / chrome like apps for specific websites)?