Multi-Account Containers

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  • Revision id: 229339
  • Created:
  • Creator: -elison-
  • Comment: Removed preference "privacy.userContext.longPressBehavior", it doesn't seem to exist in the configuration editor
  • Reviewed: Yes
  • Reviewed:
  • Reviewed by: AliceWyman
  • Is approved? Yes
  • Is current revision? No
  • Ready for localization: No
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Multi-Account Containers is a Firefox add-on that lets you separate your work, shopping, or personal browsing without having to clear your history, log in and out, or use multiple browsers. It's an improved version of the Containers feature built into Firefox Nightly and available to advanced users by setting certain preferences (see below).

What are Containers?

Container tabs are like normal tabs however the sites you visit will have access to a separate slice of the browser's storage. This means your site preferences, logged in sessions, and advertising tracking data won't carry over to the new container. Likewise, any browsing you do within the new container will not affect your logged in sessions, or tracking data of your other containers.

How to use Multi-Account Containers

  1. Install the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension from the Mozilla Add-ons website. To open Containers, look for the Containers icon in the Firefox toolbar:
    Containers button
  2. Click on it and select the container you want to open.
    container menu
Tip: Right-clickHold down the control key while you click on the new tab button to bring up the Containers menu.
NewTab-desktop
Containers are disabled in Private Browsing windows and when Never Remember History is selected in your privacy settings.

You can open new Container tabs and each one will keep separate browser storage (such as cookies or localStorage) from other Containers. Your normal tabs are the default container and will still look and act as you'd expect them to before enabling containers.

container_underline_new

How to edit, add or remove Containers

You can change the color or icon associated with a container or change the container name from the menu. To do this, click on the Containers icon in the toolbar and then click Manage Containers to open the containers settings panel.

Manage containers icons and colors Fx89

You can also add, remove or edit containers from the about:preferences#containers settings panel for Container Tabs: Containers settings Fx89

How to add, remove or edit Containers

You can create, delete, and edit containers from the Containers menu. When you click the Edit Containers or the + buttons, you can change the color or icon associated with a container or change the container name.

container menu fx62 container menu2 fx62

You can also add, remove or edit containers from the about:preferences#containers settings panel for Container Tabs:

Fx58ContainerTabSettings

You can open the Container Tabs settings panel as follows:

  1. In the Menu bar at the top of the screen, click Firefox and then select Preferences or Settings, depending on your macOS version.Click the menu button Fx89menuButton and select Settings.
  2. In the General panel, go to the Tabs section.
  3. Click the Settings… button next to Enable Container Tabs.

Open links in new tabs and containers

You can open links in a new or different container. Right-click on any link, select Open link in New Container Tab, and then select the desired container.

container right-click menu

If the current page is in a container, the Open link in New Tab item changes to Open link in New ContainerName Tab. Click on it to open a new tab within the same container as the previous tab.

What you can do with Multi-Account Containers

  1. Log in to multiple accounts on a single website at the same time. For example, if you have a personal Gmail account and a work Gmail account, you can log in to both accounts in separate containers.
  2. Protect yourself against tracking without having to log out of websites while you browse. Websites in one container can't track your activity in other containers.
  3. Protect yourself against Web security attacks. Any harmful clicks will be kept within that website's container, so attackers won't be able to hijack your information in other containers.
  4. Assign a website to a container, so that a specific website will always open in a specific container. This helps protect from accidents, stopping you from accidentally visiting a shopping site in your banking container, for example.
  5. Hide and Show: If you use your browser for both Work and Personal tasks and don’t want to be thinking about “Work” when you come home, you can “Hide” your Work tabs and proceed with your Personal tasks. Then the next day, when you are back at work, you can “Hide” your Personal tabs and “Show” your Work tabs.
  6. Sort: The Container Menu has a “Sort Tabs” option and a “Move tabs to a new window” option. Sort Tabs will put all your tabs of the same container type next to each other in a given browser window. So if you have “Work” and “Personal” tabs interleaved within each other, you can easily sort them to help organize your tasks (as seen below). “Move tabs to a new window” will take all the container tabs in your current window and move them to a fresh window.
  7. The sync feature will align Multi-Account Containers on different computers. The add-on carries over Container names, colors, icons, and site assignments on to any other machines with the same Firefox account.
For more background information about Containers, see the Containers project page. To learn more about how to use Multi-Account Containers with some quick tips and shortcuts, see this blog post.

For advanced users

You can also enable Containers without the Multi-Account Containers extension, by changing some preferences in the Configuration Editor (about:config page). Note that you will get a better user experience by installing the extension but, if you choose not to, you can set privacy.userContext.enabled to true and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled to true.