So I’ve been using Firefox’s container function for a while now and recently discovered the multi account container extension. What does this add over the built in containers? I’ve seen a lot of people say they need multi account containers but are disappointed that it’s an extension so I’m curious what it adds.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    What do you mean “built-in containers”? AFAIK, there’s no way to interact with the built-in containers without an extension to expose it. That was at least true when it launched (e.g. the Facebook container extension was awesome), and I’ve been using the multi-account containers extension ever since.

    Here’s how I use it:

    • no container - no logins at all
    • “personal” - my email and related things
    • “work” - work email and related things
    • “shopping” - online stores
    • “financial” - banking and investments

    And so on. Each group has limited access to cookies to scrape. I also have accounts at the same service in different containers and can have them side-by-side.

    If this is now built-in, awesome! But I was under the impression that you need some form of extension to access it.

    • RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      5 months ago

      I don’t have nay extension installed that interacts with containers. In settings I enabled container tabs under general and if I right click on the new tab button I can open a container tab, so it appears to be built in. I can also create custom containers for example I have one for google services. So if I understand you correctly the extension doesn’t do anything else special?

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        Ok, I did some digging and I think I figured out the difference. The multi-account containers add-on adds the following:

        • always open in container option - and sync-ing settings across devices
        • integration with VPN
        • UI for managing them in the extension button area

        The first one is the major feature for me since I use it on my work laptop, personal laptop, and desktop, and having the “always open” setting sync across devices has value. I don’t use the VPN feature, but I think you can set certain containers to always use a certain VPN configuration.

        I just always used the add-on from the start because I thought there wasn’t a UI for it.

  • octochamp@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    I removed the Facebook account containers extension recently, and it seemed it also removed the multi-account containers extension? I still had containers and could use them however, but I discovered something was up when I could no longer use the ctrl+. shortcut to choose a new container tab.

  • BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info
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    5 months ago

    FWIW I recently stopped using the extension due to large resource usage - especially painful if you have many tabs open and FF opens many processes for each container tab, eating up more RAM. I just use FF Nightly for personal stuff and regular FF for work.

  • Rogue One@mstdn.social
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    5 months ago

    @RmDebArc_5 I love containers, that’s one of Firefox’s strong points IMHO, I use it *a lot*. My main complaint is that it doesn’t handle domains, which is a pain for example with Medium.com, Google.com etc. websites, you have to manually add them all 😓