For a long time I had two different browsers installed on my computer: one for personal use and one for work. I did this to avoid mixing logins on certain platforms and to prevent cookies that I accept under certain conditions from affecting recommendations that I later find in another context, among other things. One day, however, while exploring the extensions of Mozilla an (official one, moreover) intended to correct that same problem: Multi-Account Containers.
Basically, it’s something like having multiple instances or Mozilla profiles open at the same time and sharing the same interface; which means you don’t need more than one browser to successfully separate the things you do on the Internet. Working for an airline, for example, shouldn’t mean that every advertisement you find when browsing the Internet should be for vacation trips; and your social networks shouldn’t leave traces on the pages you visit.
The answer to this kind of problems are the aforementioned Mozilla containers, which —as their name suggests— store cookiescredentials, and more separately. You can create as many as you like, customize them with name, color, and icon; and assign the web pages you want to each one. In my case, I open most URLs in standard tabs, but I leave the ones related to my work, Unreal Engine, and Twitter in specialized containers.
Download and use Multi-Account Containers
If you are interested in adding these features to your browser, it is as easy as opening it and visiting the Multi-Account Containers tab in the Mozilla Market. Once inside, you click on the add button, confirm that you want to give permissions to modify the application with the extra in question, and there you have it. You can now find it by unfolding the extensions menu (the one shaped like a puzzle piece) from the taskbar, although you can also assign web pages to a container right in the search bar that displays the current URL.
Multi-Account Containers resides in the Mozilla taskbar.
The process is as simple as opening the web page you are going to assign to a container, and once inside, clicking on the containers icon shown on the right in the search bar. Once you select which container you want to open that site with in the future, you just have to confirm and that’s it. Now you have a little more privacy and control about your internet usage. You can always undo containers or edit them from the settings menu, of course.
And if you’re just discovering Multi-Account Containers, it might be a good idea to take a look at Firefox’s extensions, as you might find other add-ons that are just as useful. Don’t just add anything for the sake of it, otherwise some might conflict with others and you’ll end up wasting CPU resources on nothing, but it’s not a bad idea to take a look at improvements for popular sites that you use often. You’ll find that there are plenty of add-ons for YouTube or Amazon, among others.
Image: Growtika via Unsplash.
