Multi-Account Containers
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There's a new ish Chromium request for this that was assigned for triage this year.
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40896879
If people make some noise and let the Chromium team that we want this, perhaps we stand a chance of Vivaldi Workspaces getting the same isolation.
Vivaldi continue to say this isn't possible, but we've seen implementations from WaveBox, Sidekick, Arc, and others.
Perhaps Vivaldi just don't see the value
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@rawkode then where did listening to the users go? Why did community get thrown out of the Window? Why does a one-man dev have to beat an entire Company?
Perhaps Vivaldi Technologies is telling me never to trust a company. Perhaps. Especially closed-source. -
@rawkode said in Multi-Account Containers:
Perhaps Vivaldi just don't see the value
As I have said elsewhere (and which is stated in the Chromium bug you linked to) Chromium's (and therefore Vivaldi's) cookie handling is so closely tied to the Application Window the website is loaded in that it is currently impossible to have separate cookie stores for different tabs in the same Application Window.
Implementing that will require MAJOR redesign of Chromium's Window, Tab, Profile, and Cookie storage to make something like that possible, and that assumes that one can come up with a solution to how to prevent user confusion about which tab is associated with which website account.
I would be very surprised if implementing something like that takes less than a year and not remotely surprised if it takes more than 2 years from actually starting the project.
As for Vivaldi trying to implement this on our own, that is not practical. We already spent several years trying to implement our own implementation of what later was standardized (and implemented in Chromium and Vivaldi) as Partitioned Cookies (a site limited third-party cookie), and while early versions were close to achieving it, as Chromium made changes to the code, more and more of the code we had added could no longer be applied and was lost, and eventually the task would have been started all over again. By that time Partitioned Cookies was becoming usable.
@Kjala There are limits to how much we can change the Chromium source, especially since we have to maintain those updates. For an impression of what is involved see this article
Chromium's source code is available here.
Vivaldi's adaptions to the Chromium code are available here
Developer and Security Expert at Vivaldi.
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@yngve thanks for the clarification.
Knowing it would require a long, technical and complicated effort, which would then be essentially a Fork of Chromium it makes sense that this is a bottom-of-the-pile request, a reasonably justified flat-out denial.But I'm confused, because cookies appear to be shared between windows (e.g., I can't open a new window and sign into a different Gmail account than the first window as whatever account I'm signed in on in the whole session is the account that's used in all windows... among a million other examples)
Would it not at least be possible to divorce the windows' sessions from each other?Not trying to attack it nothing, just looking to understand, because it Would be nice... At least to be able to use separate windows so we don't need to keep multiple browsers/extensions/settings/preferences installed, active and up to date
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@CovenStine said in Multi-Account Containers:
Would it not at least be possible to divorce the windows' sessions from each other?
That is what different profiles (and/or standalone installs) are for.
Tabs can be moved freely between windows sharing the same profile, so you cannot change the profile without removing that capability.
When selecting "New Window" or "Move tab(s) to New Window" the new Window is automatically associated with the profile of the Window in which the action is requested.
Selecting Open Profile X, creates a new Application window, associated with that profile, and thus have a separate cookie store.
The standard Window(s), the private window(s), and the Guest Window/profile are all different profiles. That also applies when you create and open a different profile in a new Application Window.
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@yngve ok so let me rewrite that to make sure I understand
The tab would be nested in the tab group, which is itself nested in the workspace, which is in turn nested in the window, which is nested in the profile.
In order to save all browsing data in the profile, the data retention occurs at the profile level.Trying to insert foreign profile material into the window/workspace/tab would require almost a parasite within the nesting structure- creating a contained virtualized profile that's wholly separate from the profile/window/workspace it's displayed within, except for the UI portion. A call to an external system from 3++ layers deep in the UI.
Good luck fitting a second whole doll into one of those Matryoshka Dolls† eh?
That sounds like a fun challenge for a graduate student, but a huge waste of resources at the full on developer level- for a free product at that...
That about right?Thanks for explaining!
†See wikipedia[dot]org/wik/Matryoshka_doll, apparently I can't post links anymore -
@CovenStine maybe a better way to have a better ideia it is to try to understand how Arc do it.
The chromium updates is being posted there just fine... so they have bigger team?Because there the profile linked to Workspace is working without major issue... so what they did different that others big companies seems hard to do?
For example their Chromium 128.0.6613.85 update was released on August 22, 2024... just 1 day after Chrome received the update on August 21, 2024.
They are not falling behind others company in post Chromium updates even with Workspace with different profiles... that lead me to believe it is not something that is hard / slow to be back ported to Chromium updates... not something that drastic changes Chromium.
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Hello! I would love to see this feature come to the browser!!
over +9000 from me
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@Edmarcio The ARC team is about three times the size of the Vivaldi team.
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@Ayespy Is that the case? When you check on Google both seems to have around 50 employees.
I think the dev team for these niche browser are more like to like... probably Chrome, Edge, etc has way more employees working on it.
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@Edmarcio I ran it though a corporate database. 86 employees, most of them developers. Vivaldi has about 50 employees, fewer than 30 of whom are developers.
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@yngve and what about Nested Tab stacks? Does Vivaldi A.S. see the value of that?
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@Kjala I don't work on the UI, so I have absolutely no idea what those devs consider implementing.
I suspect though, that the current three-level system (workspaces, tab stacks, normal tabs) suffices for most uses.
AFAICT in a quick search, though, there is no feature request for that in the system.
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@yngve said in Multi-Account Containers:
@Kjala I don't work on the UI, so I have absolutely no idea what those devs consider implementing.
Oh, okay.
I suspect though, that the current three-level system (workspaces, tab stacks, normal tabs) suffices for most uses.
AFAICT in a quick search, though, there is no feature request for that in the system.
There's big thread requesting for this feature and you might not know how Vivaldi users have the most unthought of workflows. This browser is used by OG tab hoarders, search engine hoarders, the guys who save such sessions and a lot more. You know; when in doubt, make it an option
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@Kjala said in Multi-Account Containers:
There's big thread requesting for this feature
That may get the attention of the forum admins (who might, or might not, prioritize it for a feature request bug), but in most cases, unless it is in the bug tracker most devs won't know about it.
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Really hope we get this feature. Vivaldi is a powerhouse and this feature is a no-brainier for power users. Especially web developers, people who work in IT or social media and the tech space.
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I'm not sure if it's been stated elsewhere (this is a looong thread), what I've seen of the conversation usually focuses on things like "I have multiple accounts on the same website, so I want a container for each account", and while that's not an invalid use-case, I feel it drowns out what I consider a more important use-case: privacy.
The Multi-Account Container extension stems from the Facebook Container extension, which isolates all Meta websites into its own container, ensuring that you can't be linked easily with the non-Meta websites you visit where there's communication with Meta websites.
The MAC extension can be applied to similar networks like Google, preventing a logged in account to be picked by other non-Google websites.
I do understand that this is currently not possible and not up to Vivaldi's devs to add such a feature. The workaround proposed, to make a different Profile, is not bad... however, it presents a little annoyance: if I make a new Profile for specific websites, I have to configure everything like my main Profile.
How feasible could it be to add the possibility to pre-set a new Profile with browser settings based on another Profile?
And how feasible could it be to add rules like Workspaces rules, where a certain website is opened in another Profile?
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I feel workspaces are the perfect place to build the containerisation. Allow people the option to containerise them with a checkbox if they want, or leave it empty if they'd prefer not to.
If they choose to, one workspace has cookies and session info completely separate from the next workspace. I already have separate work & personal workspaces, and this way each workspace my work workspace can be logged in to my company o365 account, the personal one in to my personal o365 account. It'll make using each so much easier.
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@bastardsheep Agree, I have see similar feature in other browser like ARC
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this would be awesome, if the worspaces worked as container (profile with separate cookies, history, logins...) but with shared app settings. This would allow to quickly switch between browsing profiles without opening separate windows.
