Firefox Multi-Account Containers For The Win!

How I simplified my Firefox setup with multi-account containers.

TL;DR

If you need multiple Firefox profiles or find yourself bombarded with unwanted ads or not sure if Facebook is tracking you around the internet then you should try Firefox and install the excellent extension Firefox Multi-Account Containers developed by the Firefox team.

Not only it helps you with having a better control over your privacy but it also assists with better organising your day-to-day use of internet and have a cleaner workflow.

My Internet

I've been using Mozilla and then Firefox since 2002.  My one and only browser.

I am a software engineer and, just like my fellow engineers around the world,  at work I do search many times a day for topics that are related to my job, like Java or Spring.  I've also got my personal topics of interests which don't necessarily overlap with those of my job, eg programming language design, history and chess.

My primary e-mail is hosted on Google services, my main source of news is Google News and I watch quite a bit of YouTube.

Additionally, like anyone else nowadays, I do a lot of online shopping and related searches.

The Problem

Google News somehow uses my search history to partially populate my feed and so does YouTube.  Most of the times, all those work-related searches find their way into my feeds and ultimately fill it up with things which I'm really not interested in reading/watching outside the work setup.

As you know, you can login to multiple google accounts on the same browser with only one being the "default" account, in which the relevant links will open.  That's OK.  But Many times I find myself wanting to open a link with a particular Google account and the only way to do so is to switch back and forth between those accounts as the primary one, so that my link opens the right app or bears the right token.

When it comes to e-shopping, esp. if I plan to buy my beloved ones a surprise present, I'm always wary of the ads Google (and most other search engines) inject into pages I visit; they may easily give my surprise away.  So, most of the times when I'm e-shopping, I open a "private browsing" window just to make sure nothing leaks out to Google.  But that ruins the convenience of being logged in to all my accounts - every time.

Like many others, I'm sensitive about the potential tracking mechanisms employed by social networks.  As a result, when I find myself needing to open a page on a social network (in particular Facebook and Instagram), I do so in a private browsing window.

And lastly, by no means I would like anything related to my banking activities be shared with any other website, social or not.  Again, the solution is a private browsing window.

My Solution Before Containers

To avoid all the above points, esp. the inconvenience of private browsing, I used to have 5 different Firefox profiles: work, personal, e-shopping, banking and social.

In case you forgot, you can create/edit profiles by visiting about:profiles in Firefox.

It worked.  Really.  I could isolate each of those activities and ensure that my work Google account has nothing shared with my personal one, my shopping activities don't know anything about my searches, etc.

But it was extremely inconvenient.  I usually had to have 3-4 Firefox profiles open and sometimes I would forget to not e-shop in my personal profile or not to open my bank's website in my social profile.  It was quite cumbersome and I had to resort to crazy sharp colour themes to make sure I always knew in which profile I was browsing.

Besides, my profile settings were not shared between devices.  So, I had to replicate the whole setup between my work laptop, my personal laptop and my personal PC.  And, this is not to mention remembering in which profile I should open which URL.

Multi-Account Containers To The Rescue

About a month ago, I came to know about this nice little extension called Multi-Account Containers - let's call it MACC for brevity's sake and it immediately transformed the way I browsed the internet.

The idea is simple: you can completely isolate your browsing activities without the need for leaving your cozy single profile setup; by setting up "containers" which encapsulate activities.

You can tell Firefox, which URL should be opened in which container and no matter where you click that, or similar, URLs it will be opened in that container.

You can colour-code your containers which helps recognising which tab belongs to which.

Last but not least, everything I listed above is automatically synchronised between your devices.  Nothing to redo over and over again every time you install Firefox on a new device.

And all this without creating a second profile - which is a relief :-)

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here's a screenshot of my Firefox with containers.  Just imagine that previously I had to open 4 different profiles to visit those websites!

screenshot of Firefox with tabs open in 4 different containers 

I LOVE YOU FIREFOX ❤️

Comments

  1. Holly Hui Su25 May 2022, 08:22:00

    Thanks for sharing! I wish there was a similar extension for Chrome!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bahman M.25 May 2022, 08:31:00

      Switching is relatively easy :-) Try this setup for a week and you won't regret it! Of course, give a holler if you get stuck.

      Delete
  2. Holly Hui Su25 May 2022, 08:24:00

    That's why I don't use my work laptop for personal stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thai Escort Mesquite12 Nov 2024, 22:56:00

    Great post thankyouu

    ReplyDelete

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