Firefox containers are heading in the direction, after using them for a couple of hours though I ended up missing the window-based system which Chrome uses.

I have one Chrome profile for my personal apps, and one for work -- creating a new tab in one of the windows will automatically open it with the same context as the rest of the window. My experience with Firefox was that I'd have to manually choose which profile to open the tab in.

1. This required me to use my mouse (geh, maybe I could use keybindings to change this though? not quite sure how difficult that would be) 2. I'm not sure if this is just a me thing, but if I create a tab stemming from my 'personal' gmail account there's a pretty strong chance that it should also be a 'personal' tab. Maybe this is just a difference in how me and the Firefox team use tabs though?

Once I figure out how to get around those issues, (and when Streak's gmail extension works on Firefox...) that's when I'd be able to move over.

edit: apparently Firefox has had true instance profiles for ages! awesome. now I'm just waiting on Streak lol.

I had the same complaints until someone told me that Ctrl + '.' opens up the container menu and you can use `tab` to cycle through containers.

Some issues with containers:

* It's way too easy to open new pages in the wrong container, and you can't convert an existing tab into another container. By the time you've opened a tab it's too late. Solution is to copy URL, create new tab, paste URL, which is a lot to do.

* There's no "New tab in same container" keyboard shortcut or button.

* If you click on a URL in a different app, or from the shell, you get a new tab in the default container.

* There's no way to designate an entire window or macOS space to a container. I have all my work stuff in a separate space, and no personal stuff should interfere. Similarly, if I'm already in a window full of, say, Google Cloud-related tabs, I don't want to clutter that window with containers.

The idea is great, but the implementation is nowhere close to being practical.

Chrome's profiles are too heavy-weight, but it has the right idea about the ability to couple window with profiles, because windows are "collections of tabs", and the most natural-feeling container of pages.

Extensions have access to and can manage containers, so maybe there's one that does what you need.

Firefox has has profiles since well before the first version of Chrome was released.

Unfortunately the UI has always been sort of hidden.

You can launch with `-P` or `-ProfileManager` to get a profile selection menu. Or nav to `about:profiles` for a slightly more convenient (but less attractive) version.

Firefox profiles are great. Better than Chrome profiles, though less convenient, for now. Interested to see how Containers fits in.

"great" may be stretching it more than a little. They have indeed worked for a very long time (which is definitely great), but launching multiple firefoxes at once with different profiles is (has been? haven't tried for over a year) an absolute nightmare for anyone not launching it exclusively from the CLI with aliases. I actually made app wrappers just so I could click things instead of having a weird blend of "you can click that icon... but then you'll just get the default profile" + "CLI if you want [profile X]".

Yeah, fair point.

My solution on macOS is an AppleScript with the usual Firefox name and icon, installed in the usual location, which runs a shell script with the proper args to pop the profile manager in a new session (`-ProfileManager -no-remote`).

The real Firefox binary is buried in a nondiscoverable location (`$HOME/Applications/.Firefox`) so that it doesn't get launched directly.

...but after getting around to making that work seamlessly, many forgotten years ago...Firefox profiles really have been great. :)

App wrapper? You can just edit the shortcut.

I used to use those profiles on Firefox - custom launchers in Debian. I did find them less convenient that Chrome, especially on Mac, so I switched to Chrome.

Firefox's new Containers aren't perfect, but I'm giving them a go and since they're in testing still I can submit feedback to influence their direction.

On Linux it's a bit simpler because a new instance is launched each time you click the launcher icon. So all you have to do is set the config to show the profile manager at each launch.

macOS (and OS X before it) is more work. The Finder will switch to the running instance if there is one, instead of launching a new one each time you click. I worked around that with an AppleScript (for the icon and double-clickability) that calls a shell script with the proper args.

It sounds sketchy when I describe it, and is clearly not an obvious option for most people, but it has worked perfectly and invisibly for years.

Aha! I didn't know about `about:profiles`, thank you

Seems to be a recent-ish addition...

Is available as an extension now: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

And it's definitely a reason to switch to Firefox. Keeping personal and work Google and AWS accounts open and separate simultaneously is really nice.

Not really a reason to switch to Firefox, it's more not a reason not to switch to it - Chrome has had it for ages. Still good that they have it though!

Firefox has had support for multiple profiles since before Chrome existed. This is a different feature that let's you segment individual tabs within a session.

Chrome only has it for each window, but Firefox has it for each tab. So much nicer.

I wish containers could be tied to which space (on macOS) I'm in. I keep all my work in one space, and all my personal stuff in another. That makes it really easy to keep things apart.

The current container extension uses the default container for new tabs and windows, which is a bit cumbersome, because you have to remember to open new tabs and windows in the current container. If it were associated with a space, it's just inherit the container from the current space.

I've been using multiple profiles for months on Firefox via `firefox -P profile1`, `firefox -P profile2`.

What's it changing to, moving forward?

Those aren't changing, the new feature, "Containers", is like having multiple isolated browser sessions running concurrently. So you can organize your tabs by purpose, isolate sensitive accounts, or just be logged into both your Facebook/Google/Twitter accounts at the same time.

The confusion is reasonable though -- your description above is exactly how I use Firefox Profiles today (and for many years).

What does Containers add? If the only answer is "a more convenient UI", then that's good enough for me!

With profiles, each profile has it's own history, bookmarks, browser settings, and so forth. In effect, it's a separate instance of Firefox.

Sometimes that's what you want, and profiles certainly aren't going anywhere. But the idea behind Containers is just that you can be logged in to separate accounts simultaneously in multiple containers.

In practice, that means a better and more convenient UI. Containers work on a per-tab basis, so you can have multiple tabs logged in to the same account right next to each other, instead of in different Firefox processes. Plus, you can right click on a link and select "Open in New Container Tab".

So while Containers are more than a UI on top of Profiles, it practice one of the main advantages is the convenience of the UI.

It's not quite a new profile since the container retains all your configuration and extensions and a profile doesn't.

It's more similar to a private browsing session, except things aren't forgotten, and you can have as many as you like. And they're tab level so you can treat them they same way you would a tab.

> It's not quite a new profile since the container retains all your configuration and extensions and a profile doesn't.

Other way around. Profiles retain configuration and extensions between sessions.

Profiles: Every configuration change or extension has to be added in every profile to keep in sync manually across different Firefox instances.

Containers: Use the same configuration and extensions across different containers in one running Firefox instance.

Both retain configuration and extensions between traditional browser sessions (start/stop). Containers additionally "retain" configuration and extensions across contextual sessions/identities.