Multi-Account Containers

iqaluit

Yes this is a must have feature and should be top priority along with any privacy and encryption initiative within vivaldi components.

Ayespy

@iqaluit It can't be a top priority, because it would mean completely changing the architecture of the browser and hiring significantly more staff. Everything cannot go on the back burner to service a single feature that most people don't even use.

iqaluit

@Ayespy I wish you wouldn't say most ''people don't use.'' A few people in power position opposing in one single forum definitely do not reflect the reality on the ground. That I know!

Besides we never know if the leadership could change direction towards a superior path and find revenue sources for more privacy...

VENIX

@Ayespy said in Multi-Account Containers:

@iqaluit It can't be a top priority, because it would mean completely changing the architecture of the browser and hiring significantly more staff. Everything cannot go on the back burner to service a single feature that most people don't even use.

I started this feature request some years ago and at that time it wasn't clear to me how embedded into the heart of the browser such technology/feature had to be implemented in. In the case of Vivaldi, the change would have to be done at the browser engine level of which they do not absolute control and maintaining such changes clearly is not part of their priorities. Such decision and maintenance they leave up to the Blink developers of which have not shown any interest for such technology.

What I hope to see is Vivaldi moving towards is hardening Vivaldi. As it currently stands, the level of privacy and security Vivaldi provides is not that far apart from Google Chrome.

Brave does this but they have their own agenda of which a lot of web-users don't agree nor want to deal with (crypto, etc) Furthermore, no web browser GUI beats Vivaldi's.

At this point a hardened Vivaldi or a Vivaldi that allows for the same level of hardening that Brave has brought forth to the Chrome line of browsers would be a great deal.
If done properly, will gain the favor of privacy and security advocates and thus more promotion.

Another option would be bringing forth a Vivaldi Gheko flavor browser. This, without a doubt would be a top notch browser killer.
It will dominate over all Firefox forks browser and it would cater to every online users.

It would place Vivaldi with all the tools for regular users and privacy and security advocates to set Vivaldi with the level of security they want and expect from a browser.

yngve

Hello all,

As mentioned earlier, implementing this would be an immense undertaking which we do not have the resources for.

It would probably take a dedicated team several months to develop the necessary changes in the Chromium code base, and possibly several more months to shepherd it through Chromium's patch submission system.

So, here is a suggestion: Many features have been implemented by people who want that particular feature, perhaps some of you are able to take on this project?

For reference, here are some links to resources:

Getting the code
Contributing code to Chromium (including the legal stuff):
Source code search engine

iqaluit

@yngve Excellent !

poisonous

This functionality not being available is sincerely the only reason I can't use Vivaldi as my browser. Like others, I've been using it for years and it's a must have for anyone who has multiple accounts on services.

I saw the "well just add it to chromium yourself" comments and it seems those folks are ignoring that not everybody has the ability to develop or write code. If you want a product to be used by people who are not developers, that's not the way to handle feature requests, especially feature requests that were opened 7 years ago and have 19 pages of replies.

Arox

@yngve Ohhh... Vivaldi is my favorite browser even though the function doesn't exist... I hope that people who have the knowledge get together to try to do something

Ayespy

@poisonous The suggestion to write something was obviously intended for those who CAN write code. There are some thousands who use Vivaldi as their default who can also write code. Vivaldi has, in the past, accepted contributions from users who are coders, and they might very well do so in this case. That the problem is built into the browser engine and that presently they do not have the resources to develop this in-house and still develop and maintain the browser per plans does not seem to have been absorbed by many of the commenters on this thread. The closest thing to a solution seen on a Chromium-based engine seen so far is a development to treat certain new windows as tabs, which took a development team twice the size of Vivaldi's to build and maintain. It is still something a few very slick coders might be able to do. It would certainly produce "containers" in Vivaldi faster than posting here.

xorel

@yngve Hi,

Thanks for this information.

As someone who knows nothing about this, if I understand you correctly, implementing this feature would require modifying Chromium.

To summarize, people would like to have "workspaces" that are distinct in terms of profile—meaning separate cookies, sessions, extensions, etc. This would make them actual "WORK"spaces, rather than just a way to organize tabs. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So, to achieve this, someone would need to modify Chromium.

Following this reasoning—and thanks again for your clarification—I conclude that if another browser has implemented this feature, it must have modified Chromium accordingly. This makes sense. In that case, according to the Chromium license, this feature should be accessible to all Chromium-based browsers. Is that correct?

I notice that both Edge and Arc, which are Chromium-based browsers, offer this feature.
Does this mean that the functionality is actually present in Chromium but not visible to Vivaldi? Or have these browsers implemented it differently?

This is a genuine question, as I have never developed in Chromium and would appreciate your insight.

Thank you very much!

yngve

@xorel One mistake: Not all patches are upstreamed to Chromium (e.g we have many patches, but they are Vivaldi specific, and thus not upstreamable).

I doubt very much that those other browsers have upstreamed the relevant patches to Chromium. I suspect the relevant patches are also incompatible between the browsers (that is, they are completely different solutions), and may not even be implemented inside Chromium code, but in their own internal code.

xorel

@yngve Hi,

Thank you for your clarification. I'm sure I will do more than one mistake in this new reply However, I must admit that I am still struggling to fully understand why Vivaldi would necessarily need to modify Chromium to implement this feature, while other browsers such as Edge and Arc seem to have managed to add it without doing so.

If I follow your reasoning:

Not all patches are upstreamed to Chromium, meaning that some features can be implemented independently in a browser’s own code.
Edge and Arc, despite being based on Chromium, appear to have developed their own version of "workspaces", which may not even be inside Chromium’s code.
Yet, for Vivaldi, modifying Chromium seems to be the only viable approach.
So my question is: Is this due to a fundamental architectural difference between Vivaldi and these other Chromium-based browsers?

Do Edge and Arc have custom layers that allow them to manage this independently, while Vivaldi relies more directly on Chromium’s session and profile management?
Is it a matter of technical complexity, development resources, or maintainability?
Or is there something in Chromium’s structure that makes it particularly difficult for Vivaldi to implement such a feature without modifying the core code?
I must emphasize that I really know nothing about how Chromium works. Every time you reply, I learn something new, so please don’t hesitate to tell me if I’m completely off track—I promise I won’t take it the wrong way!

I understand that Chromium is deeply integrated into Vivaldi, and that diverging from it too much might create compatibility and maintenance issues. But at the same time, seeing other Chromium-based browsers achieve this without upstreaming their changes raises the question of whether an alternative approach could be possible for Vivaldi as well.

I’d love to understand this better from a technical perspective. Thanks again for your insights!

yngve

@xorel You are perhaps assuming that we know how those other browsers implemented what they did to implement this specific feature.

That would be incorrect; we don't know.

At best, we suspect they are talking multiple Browser Profile Application Windows (each of which has a single cookie jar) and somehow forcibly merging them into a single Browser Window. We think that would require major changes inside Chromium, as well as separate code in how they manage the UI. The Chromium patches are no doubt not upstreamed because they would very likely be refused by the Chromium team, so they would be maintained separately.

Also, keep in mind the differences in scale and resources between the teams. Both of those teams are AFAIK multiple times the size of Vivaldi's. At the very least the Edge team can easily afford to put dozens of developers on a project like this. We can't.

electryon

@yngve said in Multi-Account Containers:

@xorel You are perhaps assuming that we know how those other browsers implemented what they did to implement this specific feature.

That would be incorrect; we don't know.

At best, we suspect they are talking multiple Browser Profile Application Windows (each of which has a single cookie jar) and somehow forcibly merging them into a single Browser Window. We think that would require major changes inside Chromium, as well as separate code in how they manage the UI. The Chromium patches are no doubt not upstreamed because they would very likely be refused by the Chromium team, so they would be maintained separately.

Also, keep in mind the differences in scale and resources between the teams. Both of those teams are AFAIK multiple times the size of Vivaldi's. At the very least the Edge team can easily afford to put dozens of developers on a project like this. We can't.

But how SessionBox does it without modifying Chromium's code?
It's an extension and they managed to do it without modifying chromium's code.
I used their extension before they got greedy and started to demand ridiculous overpriced monthly subscriptions in order to use their extension.
But that doesn't change the fact that they managed to make an extension for this without modifying the browser's code.
And they are a small company without dozens of developers.

Their MV3 version
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gmechnknnhcmhlciielglhgodjlcbien

Their MV2 version
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/megbklhjamjbcafknkgmokldgolkdfig

ingolftopf

@yngve
Thank you very much
for your, as always, very informative contributions.

yngve

@electryon No idea, but best guess: They are hooking themselves into the cookie system (which an extension can do) and running their own cookie jars from scratch.

(PS: Managing cookie jars can be tricky stuff, third-party logic, expiration, domain security rules, etc.; For that matter it is no longer just cookies that contain state, there are now many other state storage systems in a browser, which might not be as easy to separate out.)

ampr

@Ayespy Just in case you missed it: this is the top voted item in Desktop Feature Requests, a first-class add-on in Firefox, and one of the main selling points of Arc, so 1/2 of your otherwise valid point is probably very wrong. Also, how can noone not use a feature that doesn't exist?

iaMMast

Really low hopes of this becoming a thing after reading the posts above. Absolute dealbreaker for me if this isn't an available option. Don't see how I can currently maintain a good workflow without juggling multiple windows.

I work self-employed for customers, I also work for a company, I have my own projects (hobby) and of course partake in leasurely browsing. It's not uncommon for this to mix during the day from hour to hour (flexible hours). The issue however is that I have shared tooling (Google, Figma, Github, etc) with different accounts. So currently I have two options (as far as I can see):

Keep switching accounts constantly
Create multiple profiles

The last option is the best option. However some issues:

Juggling windows
Not being able to use features like "workspace rules" for tabs
I have to maintain all settings separately (but they are always the same for me tbh)
I have to maintain all bookmarks separately (again, they are mostly the same and syncing them is annoying)
Syncing tabs becomes a hassle because I have to setup syncing separately.
Also other minor annoyances; but not really important.

Don't think anyone really cares, just wanted to put my +1 out there. Also I have two genuine questions:

Does anyone have a workable solution that could help me out?
I really think my use case is normal and wanting to separate concerns (accounts, privacy, etc) shouldn't be that weird. How come most users don't care? Maybe I'm making thins harder for myself. Love to hear how other people manage these challenges.

skiffman

@iaMMast Everybody cares. This is the most important feature in a browser after security updates. And your use case is irrelevant too. A browser should verse ressources to this primary need rather than cosmetics.

VENIX

@iaMMast said in Multi-Account Containers:

Really low hopes of this becoming a thing after reading the posts above. Absolute dealbreaker for me if this isn't an available option. Don't see how I can currently maintain a good workflow without juggling multiple windows.

I work self-employed for customers, I also work for a company, I have my own projects (hobby) and of course partake in leasurely browsing. It's not uncommon for this to mix during the day from hour to hour (flexible hours). The issue however is that I have shared tooling (Google, Figma, Github, etc) with different accounts. So currently I have two options (as far as I can see):

Keep switching accounts constantly

Create multiple profiles

The last option is the best option. However some issues:

Juggling windows

Not being able to use features like "workspace rules" for tabs

I have to maintain all settings separately (but they are always the same for me tbh)

I have to maintain all bookmarks separately (again, they are mostly the same and syncing them is annoying)

Syncing tabs becomes a hassle because I have to setup syncing separately.

Also other minor annoyances; but not really important.

Don't think anyone really cares, just wanted to put my +1 out there. Also I have two genuine questions:

Does anyone have a workable solution that could help me out?

I really think my use case is normal and wanting to separate concerns (accounts, privacy, etc) shouldn't be that weird. How come most users don't care? Maybe I'm making thins harder for myself. Love to hear how other people manage these challenges.

I have a similar work flow like your thus why I requested said feature.
Vivaldi is still is my daily leisure browser but sadly not my "The One To Rule Them All Browser"

My Solution For My Sanity
For work purposes I still use Firefox. To deal and organize tabs I rely on Sidebery an add-on which provides a powerhouse of tab feature to help you organize tabs in several ways.

Mozilla forgot how to do a functional GUI that is versatile and user-settings malleable. Their current side-panel is not good and when using Sidebery this degrades its functionality and aesthetics.
If you feel like I do then you will be better off turning Firefox's new side-panel off under about:config search for "sidebar.revamp" set to false.

Likewise, you will need some useChrome CSS style to hide the top tab-bar. If interested you can find such CSS code at the Sidebery github repo.

https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery/wiki/Firefox-Styles-Snippets-(via-userChrome.css)

I hope this can be of help