Multi-Account Containers

iAN CooG

I don't seem to understand what is the problem, it's not possible for you to use different user profiles? Each user profile will have different history, saved passwords and cookies so you can have one window to open a site with one user/pass, another window opening the same site with another user/pass.

browseruser

@ian-coog Can you do this with tabs? I don't want multiple windows open

iAN CooG

@browseruser I fear it's not possible to have multiple profiles on the same window. But really, if you have to do 2 different things with 2 different users, better you try it and live with it, you can't have everything in life.

irongamer

Looking at replies talking about window based profiles must have a different workflow, have not been exposed to tabbed based containers for very long, or don't use the web much in a way that requires many accounts.

If you are managing multiple projects across different institutions in something like Trello, tabbed containers are much cleaner than having 3,4, or 5 windows open. Forcing specific sites to different tab containers is also useful for a cleaner experience. My setup has 3 monitors and it is easier to manage everything in tabs vs browser windows. I get my use case is likely in the minority but still hoping to see this feature for vivaldi one day.

kantoku

While I'd love to have this, to me it seems Multi-Account Containers may be a huge feature to implement in Vivaldi by Vivaldi developers alone and may need Google to set the foundations for it in the Chromium source code. Right now it's a killer feature of Firefox, and rightly so. I use Firefox for the accounts I wish to use with MAC and Vivaldi for everything else.

zinetx

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sessionbox-multi-login-to/megbklhjamjbcafknkgmokldgolkdfig
SessionBox addon does that.

dmg

@pesala
Hi Pesala, I don't think that is what he had in mind about 2 twitter accounts in seperate tabs.

I think there is a misunderstanding about what, it is, the containers do, that people like so much.

People want to browse normally in different accounts in different tabs in the same window.

Something like what this browser does and advertises..
https://ghostbrowser.com

I have two Notion accounts I want them side by side in same window, using the power of Vivaldi to tile or stack. I can drag and drop between or from the side panel.
Likewise with 2 or 3 email accounts. ( work, personal and family)
Or webapps ( think Trello, Asana, Clickup, Slack....)
Social media managers could stay logged into all the accounts they are managing that day.
In Infinity ( trello clone) I have a personal and a work account and with Vivaldi I have to use a separate vivaldi install to access both.

If I use the private tab I lose all my extensions, my whole setup and all the functionality of Vivaldi I mention above to mix and match tabs, using extensions and tiling, stacking.... etc....

Likewise, different profiles take time to set up and are not flexible. Profiles are really for different users that need a different setup (look or feel)
If I get a new client today to manage their accounts, I don't want to set up a profile that I might never use again once complete. I just want to login and get down to work using my profile that I have spent time setting up for my needs.

For ease of work, I don't want the disconnect that happens to my workflow and productivity from switching profiles, browsers, or to private windows with different setups bookmarks, etc. The beauty of Vivaldi is I can set it up best for my productivity needs and I waste time if I leave that optimum environment.

Private Tabs are for privacy and have a different place But this is not what people are seeking.

You might as well just use a separate browser, because it's NOT the Privacy people are looking for!
(apart from keeping accounts private and unseen from each other. under the hood, like ghost browsers cookie jars concept.).

It's the Multi-Tasking with Multiple apps and Multiple logins using the FULL power of Vivaldi, that people are looking for.

Functionality that will drastically speed up people's workflow, whose desktop is the web browser.

Functionality that Vivaldi desperately needs and why this is the most voted for request, In my opinion.

I could never leave Vivaldi for Ghost browser or firefox as I would leave too many great features.
But this is a feature we really need in today's internet and I hope Vivaldi adds it because Vivaldi is the best.

Pesala

@dmg browseruser asked what he can do. Must he wait for this feature request to be implemented before he can open two Twitter accounts at once? Right above his post I explained why we might have to wait some time for this to be implemented.

This is one of the feature requests from the beginning of this new feature request forum, and is second in the list of the most popular feature requests.

Currently, it is tagged as Nice to Have, so the developers are not currently working on it, nor is it in the Pipeline of things to do.

Workarounds are all that we can offer at the moment for those who cannot wait months or years to do what they want.

sophisticatedCat

@pesala said in Multi-Account Containers:

@dmg browseruser asked what he can do. Must he wait for this feature request to be implemented before he can open two Twitter accounts at once?

Well they can also just open Firefox. I do it for for the rare cases where I have to do something in one of my 3 google accounts (work, private, pseudonymous) that is not the currently logged in one because it's faster to do than either

logging out of the currently-signed in account in Vivaldi, logging into the other one and then back again
or
use one of the many workarounds mentioned here, all of which involve me opening a second browser window* and in some cases even still having to login into the other account. If I've got to clutter my workspace with another window it might as well be a Firefox one where I've got this stuff already set up.

The last remark is another point in favor of Containers. It takes me like 5 minutes to setup my container workflow in Firefox on a new machine. Press and hold New Tab -> Manage Containers -> Add one for each account. -> Open tabs in the respective containers and login to the relevant accounts, making sure I specify "keep me logged in".

Tada, I now have a solution to use any website with the account I want already logged in and it takes literally only two additional clicks when opening a new tab to specify the account (right click on link -> hover over context menu "open in container" -> click container in list), and those tabs integrate seamlessly with all the other tabs.
If one combines it with pinned tabs you can have your browser open multiple google-calendar/twitter/gmail/whatever tabs on startup all of which are logged into different accounts. Very handy. It's not ideal that someone who wants to separate their work life, their real-life-but-private persona and their pseudonymous persona needs to create different accounts to do that, but I think it's good practice and containers are the browser-solution to deal with that, I'm not sure it can get any less painless. It really is a killer-feature for Firefox, by which I mean for me it's the last reason to open up Firefox from time to time as described above.

(This last bit is more for the people who confuse containers with being about privacy or something else besides workflow. This thread has been 7 pages being mostly dominated by people who don't know what containers are about. I don't know if they have any privacy benefits beyond encouraging people to have multiple accounts per service (which they do by making working with multiple accounts seamless))

Currently, it is tagged as Nice to Have, so the developers are not currently working on it, nor is it in the Pipeline of things to do.

Workarounds are all that we can offer at the moment for those who cannot wait months or years to do what they want.

That's actually fine, but it is a bit tiring to read statements pretending that 1. any of the workarounds are close enough to the real thing to be acceptable or 2. that this isn't a killer feature by Firefox worth emulating. I don't think there's anything else in Firefox these days that justifies keeping it around as a user (well now that I think about it maybe Tree Style Tabs does things that Vivaldi's native tabs don't...). Goddamnit I would just like a browser that has or allows adding top-notch functionality and isn't suspect to changes by the monkeys over at Mozilla who make such inane decisions like getting rid of compact mode and shit.

Right above his post I explained why we might have to wait some time for this to be implemented.

I mean that boiled down to "We don't wanna! (invest the manpower because we don't think it's worth it)" Which I guess is actually fine too. You work on what you want to work on. But then I don't think you have a reasonable claim to say that you're a browser that pursues to be about what users want.

* for completeness's sake, SessionBox does not require this afaict. Instead it requires signing up an account with them and supposedly sharing infos about my online accounts and browsing behavior with them which is like orders of magnitude worse.

Pesala

@sophisticatedcat You need to understand that the Ambassadors and Moderators are just volunteers, and we do not work for Vivaldi. We do not get to decide what gets top priority, and your top priority is going to be different to mine, and that of the developers.

The developers seldom respond here. If it is anyone from the Vivaldi Team, it is more often than not a Community Manager. The developers are active in the Snapshot and Stable release threads.

If you look at the Feature Requests Index Thread 386 topics are tagged as done. Including those for Mobile, Email, etc., over 4,800 feature requests remain, and 38 of those have 75 or more votes. Most have zero or very few votes. I think the Vivaldi Team can claim to pursue what most users want.

becm

@sophisticatedcat nobody is arguing that Containers are a useful and desired feature for Vivaldi.

Site isolation and other core features are simply restricted to how much the Chromium base can be coerced to behave like a sensible web browser.

The current work by Google for better 3rd party isolation (cookies, caches) may actually cover large parts of the required changes to browser session management (multiple instances).
But I doubt the API for contextual identities will slip in along the way (happy to be disproved).

PartiesByV

Just starting with Vivaldi and am really enjoying it. However, I am missing multi-account containers quite a bit. In addition to preventing me from being tracked as much, they boost my efficiency.

I have a Google Workspace account and two paid-by-inspecting-my-data accounts. Most things need to be opened in the Workspace account. However, Google photos and Google voice were already set up with the other accounts. Multi-account containers lets me set a domain (ex: mail.google.com vs photos.google.com) to open whichever profile I set instead of having to switch accounts each time.

Thanks

glassich

@pesala Except the profile manager requires you to open a new window. Multi account containers just opens your separate accounts in new tabs. Much better.

VENIX

@zinetx SessionBox has been discussed before. I myself prefer and in-house, in-browser solution. I wouldn't trust my precious accounts cookies with third party like this.

I've nothing against SessionsBox, they have not given any reason to be mistrusted, that I know of, but their approach to this solution, is one I don't agree with. I might as well just keep using my modified FF for said convenience.

VENIX

@ian-coog In this case I might as well just use different web-browser to achieve the same and perhaps add extra anonymity/complexity.

I've always found Profiles to be annoying and just a problem creator. I myself have encounted several issues to the point of having to reset/reinstall vivaldi.

Then is the case of having someone else using the same browser as you under a different Profile but then they forget to switch to said profile. I learned my lessons and bought her own computer hahaha.

Anyways, what is known as Multi-Account Container is much more than the name. It is a cookie management system which creates a cookie container per tabs/windows.
Instead of having 15 windows/browser, you can have 1 windows with 15 tabs each with their own cookie container. Separate cookies container means you can signup 15 different accounts/websites that cannot see eachoher cookies.

kmtchl

@venix said in Multi-Account Containers:

@zinetx SessionBox has been discussed before. I myself prefer and in-house, in-browser solution. I wouldn't trust my precious accounts cookies with third party like this.

I've nothing against SessionsBox, they have not given any reason to be mistrusted, that I know of, but their approach to this solution, is one I don't agree with. I might as well just keep using my modified FF for said convenience.

Honestly not having FF's multi account containers is the one thing stopping me from making Vivaldi my full time browser,

It's the one thing for me that puts FF above every other browser.

timandtarynharris

Please implement this feature. I know it has been mentioned that it will not be simple, but Ghost Browser is also chromium based and has a really good implementation. Especially with the new sidebar! If Vivaldi could do this you would win over many users who are still using Firefox or Ghost Browser for this specific feature.

Luxuri

I SECOND THIS! Only thing that keeps me from using Vivaldi as my primary browser. I still depend mainly on firefox because of THIS ONE feature. This was requested back in 2018, come on! Let's consider and implement it:)

gwarah

I also 'vote' yes to implement this feature

umibozu

i work with multiple accounts of ms powerapps. the containers firefox approach to cookies is absolutely a killer app.

Managing that with profiles is a pain.

Please consider to develop this feature.