Forum Discussion
Edge container tabs
Hello everyone.
One of the things I like in the Firefox is the possibility of using containers.
Mozilla have two containers add-on's, Facebook Container (exclusively to the Facebook) and Multi-Account Containers.
The first is used to prevent Facebook tracking our online activity by creating an isolated and exclusive environment. Where every cookie, every tracking script, APIs that Facebook creates / uses / have, are isolated inside the container.
And the second, is almost the same thing as the first, works by creating an isolated environment as well, but is for any website.
The containers are, a some kind, sandboxes.
I'd like to see the support for this in the Edge.
Microsoft need to bring this to the Edge, but in a natively way without the need of installing any extension.
And the option to create a container tab can be placed next to the profile avatar, for example.
By the way, Chrome/Chromium do not have support for this.
This is a very very useful.
About Multi-Account Containers: https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/introducing-firefox-multi-account-containers/
I do not know if I can put this kind of links, but, if I broke any rule, I'll remove this post.
I agree. Firefox containers are the most simple and productive way to keep multiple accounts from the same service open at the same time, they are the single feature I miss most from Firefox. And they are remembered when you closed and then open again the browser. With Edge I have to re-select the Google user account every time because it opens the wrong one.
- Firefox container isn't as good as people think. It just separates cookies, that's it, nothing else.
Websites have a plethora of techniques and tactics that can track and uniquely identify you. They can track you based on your time zone, installed fonts, CPU cores, RAM capacity, OS version, screen size, the way you type, the device orientation, available sensors in your hardware etc.
Firefox container does not protect you from any of those things.
Your best bet is to use Windows Sandbox, change your timezone in it, and then browse the Internet, that way you still more secure and also more anonymous.- As others have stated, it's not being used as a "privacy" feature (because it's not). It's used for productivity. For example, I tend to be signed into multiple AWS Accounts throughout the day because of my day job. Being able to switch among AWS Accounts by simply switching tabs in my browser is a huge time saver.If it were only 1 or 2 accounts, then I could just have a couple of browsers open (e.g., Firefox and Chrome/Edge) but I tend to have more open than that.
I also use this for multiple Google accounts, which can be a huge time saver.
While Edge does come preinstalled on my Windows laptops, I only use it to install Firefox. I do open Edge from time to time to see what's new, but I don't ever see it becoming my default browser without this capability.- Spoiler
jsbramwell wrote:
As others have stated, it's not being used as a "privacy" feature (because it's not). It's used for productivity. For example, I tend to be signed into multiple AWS Accounts throughout the day because of my day job. Being able to switch among AWS Accounts by simply switching tabs in my browser is a huge time saver.If it were only 1 or 2 accounts, then I could just have a couple of browsers open (e.g., Firefox and Chrome/Edge) but I tend to have more open than that.
I also use this for multiple Google accounts, which can be a huge time saver.
While Edge does come preinstalled on my Windows laptops, I only use it to install Firefox. I do open Edge from time to time to see what's new, but I don't ever see it becoming my default browser without this capability.For profile switching, Edge has this edge://settings/profiles/multiProfileSettings
you can configure it to auto switch for you. I use it to manage multiple Azure and M365 identities.
HotCakeX wrote:
Firefox container isn't as good as people think. It just separates cookies, that's it, nothing else.Most don't expect it to do anything about privacy or tracking as people think. They just want the productivity benefit of it, nothing else.
Jokes aside, I and many others are fully aware that it's all containers do, that's all we want them to do, so that you can have 2 sessions on the same website without having to resort to private windows or secondary profiles, which accomplish the same goal but with a lot more inconvenience.
Think of this request as nothing more than not having to create separate profiles for the browser and just let us have separated cookie sessions so that YouTube Music can just run in a tab without us having to go switching profiles when we decide to go watch YouTube videos.
HellDuke wrote:
HotCakeX wrote:
Firefox container isn't as good as people think. It just separates cookies, that's it, nothing else.Most don't expect it to do anything about privacy or tracking as people think. They just want the productivity benefit of it, nothing else.
Jokes aside, I and many others are fully aware that it's all containers do, that's all we want them to do, so that you can have 2 sessions on the same website without having to resort to private windows or secondary profiles, which accomplish the same goal but with a lot more inconvenience.
Think of this request as nothing more than not having to create separate profiles for the browser and just let us have separated cookie sessions so that YouTube Music can just run in a tab without us having to go switching profiles when we decide to go watch YouTube videos.
Well since the goal is not hiding your alternative account, most websites offer account switching capability, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Discord, Facebook etc. all have it, so might as well use that feature.
There are also lots of PWAs in Microsoft Store, they have separate cookie storage than Edge browser so they can be used too.
Windows also natively supports Android apps so YouTube, Spotify, Discord, Telegram etc. can have their own native apps running next to other programs.
And of course there are Edge profiles. The point is that there are lots of alternatives already available and they are much better than waiting for container capability to come to Edge, if at all, specially since it barely offers any security or privacy benefits.
Usually the teams working on a feature must evaluate its benefits to see if it's worth the time and money to develop it, security is a great justification, privacy is next in line, containers, at least the way Firefox implements them, don't satisfy either of them, just saying.
- this is a must add feature! if Edge is going to be the best browser for windows, it should have the best features! and multi-account containers is the killer feature in Firefox for me at the moment, no other browser has anything like it that I've found and that to me is shocking because of how simply amazing a feature it is.
goof320, it's clear that they don't care. These community discussions are a waste of time. I've stopped using Edge the moment they started to force Bing stuff down my throat. When they made the Bing button unremovable, I've switched to Brave. Not because Brave has this feature, but at least such features can be easily disabled and privacy options are much more. A week later they noticed their mistake after a lot of complaints on the internet, and gave users the option to hide it. For me it was too late, I knew where this was going. Just like everything else that is Microsoft nowadays, bloated and full of ads. For me Edge was over from that moment.
It's a shame cause the team did a good job initially by replacing Internet Explorer with an amazing modern browser based on the Chromium engine. All they had to do was fine tune what they built rather than destroying it with bloatware. Now it again looks like a 00s browser full of unwanted toolbars.
Arc browser is chromium based and it kind of has this feature. I think this should be possible in MS Edge.
- Yes we do need this.
- Since it's been so long and nothing on the news, I will second this. The feature on Firefox is the last reason that is preventing me from swithing. For a time I gladly used Microsoft Edge, however I cannot justify using any browser that does not support that feature.
- Container tabs are the only reason I won't switch from Firefox.
- isnt this the robin tabs thing? edge://flags/#edge-robin
TheProphetOfSouptaking a look at that project seems like there is no overalp. The project is meant to isolate pages from the hardware. The containers in Firefox simply separate your sessions and cookies from other containers and non-container tabs and that's the extent of it. There is no separation between the session and your hardware and indeed it would be unwanted in the common use case context. Imagine every time you download the file it would be unavailable to your PC, or the clipboard would be isolated to only that tab, not quite what you would want but exactly what Robin offers.
In Edge and Chrome you can add a new profile. Let's say you have profile home and profile work. If you go to mail.google.com on home and login to one email, you can go to the same page on another profile and login to a different email. That is what container tabs achieve. The downside of profiles like Chrome and Edge is that your bookmarks between the profiles cannot by syncronized and you need to also manually add all the same extensions you wish to be using. This is fine in the example given since you want work and home stuff to be very separate, but what if you have multiple work profiles, or multiple credentials for personal use? Opening entirely new sessions is not as comfortable.
- +1
One feature I use with Firefox a lot and it's the only reason why I don't even try edge currently. - Please, up to my feedback based on your discussion https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/0cce3dcd-be67-ed11-a81b-000d3a7dd78c
- up for for this feature
