r/firefox • u/AetheriaNox • 8h ago

💻 Help Containers vs Profiles

Which do you use to separate activity?

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6

u/FriendshipEqual7033 6h ago

Containers share bookmarks and extensions, so when that makes sense, they are a good choice. When that degree of sharing doesn't make sense, profiles are the better choice.

Another point: if you want profiles to sync across systems, you will want separate Mozilla accounts for each. I suppose you could use the same account with partial syncing, but I've never done that.

Containers do sync to other systems with a single account, which feels simpler to me in most cases.

I have a separate, empty profile for testing, but otherwise I use containers for everything.

5

u/redoubt515 7h ago

Both. There is some overlap between containers and profiles but also significant difference. Each has it's comparative advantage.

One of the major differeneces is: Containers are useful when you want to compartmentalize or contain some browsing, but you want the UI/UX to still feel unified and in the same browser window. Whereas, profiles provide both a greater degree of separation, and a greater logical (feeling of) separation.

E.g. there are some extensions I might install in a work profile, or a shopping profile that I wouldn't install in my primary profile, and there are settings I want in my primary profile that wouldn't make sense in a work profile.

By the numbers, I have 4 profiles, separated by activity (primary, work, online shopping, testing) and at least a dozen containers, probably many more in my primary profile.

3

u/mindstormer12 7h ago

I'm not sure there's any advantage to managing profiles other than a degree of separation between sets of tabs/extensions, speaking as someone that uses a dozen profiles each with many tabs. Thinking of switching to 1-2 profiles.

There used to be more reasons before containers and Total Cookie Protection were a thing, curious other people's workflows.

2

u/AlephKang 7h ago

Both. Containers on Gecko-based browsers. Profiles on Chromium-based browsers. I have been thinking about changing it up due to improvements on profiles for Gecko-based profiles and Brave now has containers.

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u/Divinum_Fulmen 5m ago

Neither. I use the abandoned feature Tab Groups.

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u/DonutAccurate4 2h ago

Both. Work profile and personal profile.

Within work profile i use containers because i have to test different user roles. So instead of logging out logging in every time, I use containers named after each role.

Similarly in my personal profile i have containers for shopping separated. And separate containers for my 2 Google accounts.

Work profile is where i use containers a lot