I started using this, but my impression of the usability is poor. E.g. I use GitHub both personally and for work, on the one hand containers are awesome because it handles the "staying logged in" really well, but on the other hand opening tabs and links is a nightmare that ends up with me duplicating every tab in the right container. I'd love it if I could say "this window is my work window, all tabs should open in work".

Have you found any way to deal with that?

Firefox profiles is an option, if you prefer to split accounts into different windows.

I use Firefox container tabs (for GitHub specifically) instead. It's lighter-weight and the UI is better. Container tabs are color-coded, so the different accounts are easy to distinguish.

Or you could use container tabs in multiple Firefox windows under a single Firefox profile.

the problem is to make sure that new tabs are opened in the right container.

i had this experience as well that often the wrong container was picked.

but maybe i am using the wrong workflow

I haven't seen that issue, but my use cases are pretty simple:

When I need to open a GitHub tab for my organization admin account, I open a new tab in my "work/admin" container first, then nav to GitHub. Child tabs are opened in the same container. This is 99% of my usage.

Following an incidental link from elsewhere to GitHub will open in the default account/primary container (or "no container"). Or, you can right-click and select "Open in New Container Tab > Container X" if you are aware of the need to switch accounts ahead of time...(and if you are not, there's "Reopen in Container > Container X").

I don't use the multiple-windows/multiple-containers model. There might be an extension for "open all tabs in this window in container X" though.

I use Profiles and multiple windows when the separation is important, and Containers in the same window when the separation is merely convenient.

one problem for me is opening links from the outside, like from emails, into the right container. there is no UI to choose the container before the link is opened.

this is also a problem with using multiple profiles in different windows

Yes.. what you want is Temporary Containers, it can be used in conjunction with Multi Account Containers above.

https://medium.com/@stoically/enhance-your-privacy-in-firefo...

You can get it to open things with the same subdomain in the same container, or force it to do differently by holding down control for example. I have mine configured like so:

https://github.com/dngray/user.js/tree/fx-desktop#global-iso...

Few things:

- Middle click the Plus button to open a new tab in the same container directly adjacent (instead of at the end) to the current one.

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr... allows you to have different groups open within a browser window and switch between them. You can enforce a particular container per group. It may allow different "groups of groups" per window, so you can just use one group per window but use it to enforce the container.

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-and-sw... allows you to type e.g. "co work" in the omnibox to switch containers from the keyboard.

I'm using the Simple Tab Groups plugin [0]; you can have two separate windows, each with a different group selected, and you can associate a group with a container. Alternatively, I prefer having only one window, and switch between the groups as needed.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...

Not OP, but: - long clicking the + for a new tab lets you select a container - right click Open in New Container - links opened from a container stay in the container

With those, it seems to cover my use cases.

Cool this sounds great!

I'm a containers early adopter and have 38 containers (just counted them) that are highly configured. There are many extensions that not only honor containers but allow for detailed customization.

That said, even just the "built-in" Multi-Account Containers will allow you to pin a domain to a particular container - i.e. amazon.com will always open in a Shopping container, wellsfargo.com always in Banking, slack, github, netlify always in Work, twitter only in Social Media, Gmail and YouTube in Google, etc.

Containers themselves are effectively just a label and a (limited) privacy sandbox. So far I have experienced no performance hit nor other issues so I create new Containers at will. Thus if you have 6 gmail accounts you can create Google1, Google2, and stay logged into all of them all of the time.

Additionally, I use the Cookie Auto Delete extension to only persist specific cookies to specific containers while all other cookies are wiped. I can maintain my YouTube subscriptions in a container that stays logged in my primary gmail account while being able to also watch other random videos in my Random container without polluting my real account history.

For work I have about 6 different accounts that I can be actively logged-in with; each tab is a different user with an entirely different role (for testing) and all can exist side-by-side.

As other have mentioned, you can always right click on any link from any container and open that link in a different container.

For me there is no going back to "standard" browsing. I can remain independently logged in to whatever I choose and feel confident those cookies are segregated from any other browsing activity. (obviously my IP is the same and some forms of fingerprinting surely still manage to track me in some manner)

Recently I added the Containerise extension which allows for even greater granularity with the always-open-in-a-container feautre: it allows for subdomain & even regex-based url rules. So, for example, console.aws.amazon.com can open in an AWS container (logged in my work email) while amazon.com can open my Shopping container (logged in with my personal email).

TLDR - containers plus extensions are extremely flexible and powerful

Does anyone know if the privacy.firstparty.isolate setting is any less effective than containers? It certainly is easier to use, since you don’t have to make choices about what goes in each container.

This is great. Is there any other browser that supports this sort of isolation as well? Not saying I can't use Firefox, but just wanted to know!

This might not be the answer your looking for, but i do this with just the chrome profile-directory command line flag to have a separate chrome for personal, work, and sometimes one for testing or contract work.

The only downside or issue i've run into is when some application wants to use some web login and it just launched the default browser. sometimes copy and pasting the url into the browser with the profile i want to use works, sometimes not.