[pentagrama]

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...

[Izkata]

> Now that container management is available directly in Firefox, I’d prefer to use the native implementation if possible.

It's been available for years in stable, including the management page on the settings, if you enable them in about:config (privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). Plenty of us have been using them for a long long time without extensions.

Based on the list of features, the announcement appears to just be flipping those settings on by default.

> 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?

Most likely those addons flipped at least the first setting and just used the native implementation with their own interface. After Quantum and Electrolysis, Firefox was a lot more locked down and addons couldn't do stuff like this on their own. There was a previous thread a few days ago where a bunch of us were confused because we had these enabled and didn't remember enabling it, and some replies suggested the addons flipped the about:config setting.

Edit: I just found my old comment in this post, the old post I was referring to is this one. It's been resurfaced from 3 days ago.

[yunohn]

> if you enable them in about:config (privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled)

This would be my definition of not available as a native user-accessible feature versus what they are launching now.

[giancarlostoro]

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.

[realityfactchex]

> 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).

[bityard]

> 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]

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.

[WorldMaker]

They are definitely orthogonal use cases. I find I prefer Profiles for different accounts/identities more than Containers (including profiles being very different windows of Firefox reducing confusion of which identity I'm looking at). Containers I like using for those hard privacy walls of pinned sites to avoid more "personalized" ads. But the flexibility exists to mix and match and use Containers and Profiles for either/both use cases. I don't think there's a "wrong way" to use them, just your personal preferred way.

[Walf]

Profiles for separation is good for large differences like work and personal life, but I find the lack of shared history, bookmarks, and add-ons to be a pain. Running them simultaneously is annoying because only one profile is considered your default browser, which can receive external links, e.g. from your email client.

There are some good add-ons to pin bookmarks to specific containers, which helps.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> use the same service with different accounts & identities

Last week, I needed to do Google Takeout on a doz different user accounts (hours between request and availability). In a few seconds, I had a doz temp containers to keep the sessions alive and isolated, until the downloads showed up.

[rraghur]

I use sidebery to set up rules so I can get the best of both... Parallel logins and automatic pinning

[lxgr]

> [...] integration with Mozilla VPN or your own proxy [...]

This one is one of my favorite things about Firefox containers. I love being able to only route a given streaming or banking site through my home network when traveling without incurring the latency and bandwidth hit on my other browsing.

Unfortunately Firefox's native "VPN" (the new, built-in, free, Fastly-powered one that's actually a proxy) seems to have broken this feature; I hope they'll fix that at some point.

[HappMacDonald]

I use the proxy feature extensively as a network administrator, it is quite frequent that I need to SSH tunnel to get to the Web UI of a remote resource (for security or at least as often to bypass a routing deficiency I am troubleshooting) and before Multi-account Containers I'd basically have to fire up a completely different browser since the proxy settings I use would control every tab and every site I tried to reach.

With Multi-account containers I get to choose which tabs use the proxy :)