Live data from Hacker News

Multi-Account Containers

support.mozilla.org

71–80 of 254 posts

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#71
post #44

Experience is still lacking compared to Chrome profiles. Chrome profiles are so much better UX wise than any other solution, especially the color coding of the window.

I'd argue it's far superior - no need to be switching windows constantly and setting the domain automatically loads that site in the correct context.

Multiple windows for me is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait; what's the point of them if they're not meant to be used against the same site?!

They are. My guess is that person is doing something wrong.

The feature is incredibly buggy. I wrote a sibling comment that details some of the glitchiness.

It's dangerous to use a system that can't keep sessions independent. There are bugs that may cause you to inadvertently take action in the wrong account. I nearly botched one of our own accounts.

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#73
post #54
post #24

Pretty useful. Something I learned at some point was that you can actually combine this with Wireguard: If you dig into the extension, there's a feature that lets you set a SOCKS5 proxy for a profile. You can then point it to a running Wireproxy to go from SOCKS5 to Wireguard. Could be handy.

@jchw that's neat! You've seen this in source or is it accessible somehow from the UI?

Accessible via the UI: click into the extension, click the right arrow next to a container, select "Manage This Container", then "Advanced Proxy Settings" and you can enter a SOCKS5 URI. And of course, this requires the aforementioned extension, not just the built-in container tabs feature. (Confusingly, Firefox does have this feature "cooked in", presumably they just expose a bunch of it via WebExtension APIs so that things like Multi-Account Containers can work.)

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#74

I've been using this since it was new. I'm very frustrated to say the UI/UX hasn't seen any significant update. Containers are still synced separately, so any fresh install of Firefox will have the tutorial UX and the default 4 containers, even after syncing. Also, address bar completion is still monolithic, making it very easy to accidentally open a site in an undesired container. That can be worked around by adding…

Agree, it's also quite awkward to link a domain to a container, and sometimes it doesn't work well, for example gmail because it also uses Google.com (I want to separate Gmail and my Google search)

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#75

I've been using this for a few years now and love it. I wish for two things. 1) i wish there was a way to automatically delete cookies/cache/history from specific containers every time. My personal container needs cookies and logins saved. My other containers don't need persistent cookies. 2) I've always wished for protonvpn to apply to only specific containers. Reading this now though, I see firefox's VPN does that…

You can apply a per container proxy, so if you run a proxy that goes through your vpn, you could do this with protonvpn. I do this with a ssh tunnel.

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an identical feature, but I have some workflows which require Chromium and compartmentalization between a multiple accounts, and Brave's profiles aren't a bad alternative.

For someone that hasn't used Brave in a while - what's the difference between Brave profiles and profiles in other Chromium browsers?

There may be other Chromium-based browsers which do this, but none that I use: on launch the user is (optionally) prompted with a profile selection tool, with additional options to create a new profile or go into a guest session. I appreciate this because without it I often end up wondering why something isn't behaving properly, and after a moment of confusion then realize I'm in the wrong profile.

It's not perfect, and I prefer Firefox's rules-driven containers, but for anything which requires Chrome I've found it sufficient.

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#78
I've been using distinct FF profiles to separate work browsing from personal browsing on the same machine. I give each profile a differently colored theme to visually separate the two and discourage accidentally using one profile for another's purpose.

Would multi-account containers be better for that workflow?

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#79
post #74

I've been using this since it was new. I'm very frustrated to say the UI/UX hasn't seen any significant update. Containers are still synced separately, so any fresh install of Firefox will have the tutorial UX and the default 4 containers, even after syncing. Also, address bar completion is still monolithic, making it very easy to accidentally open a site in an undesired container. That can be worked around by adding…

Agree, it's also quite awkward to link a domain to a container, and sometimes it doesn't work well, for example gmail because it also uses Google.com (I want to separate Gmail and my Google search)

You can open a bookmark in a chosen tab via the context menu when right-clicking on a bookmark in e.g. your toolbar. I use this to separate Gmail accounts. I use private search for Google search.

Re: Multi-Account Containers

#80

We use different AWS accounts for different purposes at work. It would be an extreme productivity loss if I had to go back to using something other than Firefox's containers.

It's not an identical feature, but I have some workflows which require Chromium and compartmentalization between a multiple accounts, and Brave's profiles aren't a bad alternative.

Chrome itself has profiles, which I use for exactly the same use case (multiple AWS logins)
Post reply on HN