When I first tried to switch to from Chrome to Firefox, I got frustrated by the different approaches to user profiles, but multi-containers fixed it for me.
Chrome makes it easy to switch profiles/accounts with the account button in the top right, but Firefox profile management is clunky. You have to choose on startup and can’t launch a window with a different profile from the browser itself.
Next time I tried, I found Multi-containers! It’s EXACTLY what I was trying to do with Chrome Profiles (isolate cookies per persona) and it improves on Chrome in a couple ways:
- lighter than Chrome profiles, very fast to create new containers
- Not tied to a google account
- multiple containers in the same window
- Domain-specific rules make sure you don’t cross-contaminate containers accidentally
- Profile stuff like History and bookmarks is shared across containers and securely synced with client side encryption by default.
You can also get a REAL win for privacy by adding the Temporary Containers extension [0]. This lets you create arbitrarily many containers. It defaults to being an option (right click -> open in temp container) but can be set much more aggressively. I have it create a new temporary container every time I move to a new domain. Amazing.
That DOES require some manual configuration to avoid breaking complex products like Office365. I created a huge regex that identifies Office365 domains and triggers a whitelist with less aggressive isolation. Still, not too much more work than running uBlock Origin with 3rd party resources disabled by default.
> - Profile stuff like History and bookmarks is shared across containers and securely synced with client side encryption by default.
That's actually why I prefer the full profile option in Firefox (i.e. running 'firefox -p' and selecting a profile). I don't want shared history across profiles.
Chrome makes it easy to switch profiles/accounts with the account button in the top right, but Firefox profile management is clunky. You have to choose on startup and can’t launch a window with a different profile from the browser itself.
Next time I tried, I found Multi-containers! It’s EXACTLY what I was trying to do with Chrome Profiles (isolate cookies per persona) and it improves on Chrome in a couple ways:
- lighter than Chrome profiles, very fast to create new containers
- Not tied to a google account
- multiple containers in the same window
- Domain-specific rules make sure you don’t cross-contaminate containers accidentally
- Profile stuff like History and bookmarks is shared across containers and securely synced with client side encryption by default.
You can also get a REAL win for privacy by adding the Temporary Containers extension [0]. This lets you create arbitrarily many containers. It defaults to being an option (right click -> open in temp container) but can be set much more aggressively. I have it create a new temporary container every time I move to a new domain. Amazing.
That DOES require some manual configuration to avoid breaking complex products like Office365. I created a huge regex that identifies Office365 domains and triggers a whitelist with less aggressive isolation. Still, not too much more work than running uBlock Origin with 3rd party resources disabled by default.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...