Help! Unable to restore Saved Session to Private Window in Vivaldi 5.

[Satamnesiac]

I just upgraded to Vivaldi 5 and before I upgraded I saved the tabs in my private window File>Save All Tabs as Session... as a saved session. I do this when I shut down Vivaldi as private windows are not persisted otherwise.

Up until now with Vivaldi 4.x I could open a new private window and when I selected restore session I'd get the dialog box associated with that window, untick new window, and restore the session to the private windows. Perfect.

With Vivaldi 5 when I select File> Open Saved Session... a non private window jumps to foreground (even opening if it's previously been minimised) and I can only restore to THAT window or a new (non private) window.

I'm running OSX and I'm wondering if this is WAD (I hope not) and if this behaviour is reproducible by others so that I can raise it as a bug.

My work-around was to save the all the tabs in the window to a bookmark folder and then close the non private tab... then I can open from bookmarks all the tabs into a new private window.

For me the original behaviour was the only reason to use sessions rather than folders of tabs to persist private windows between launches - indeed it'd be great if the session function stored if tabs were private or not to start with and restored appropriately.

So I'd be interested to know if it's just me, just OSX or a general behaviour in 5.x

Thanks

[Pesala]

@satamnesiac I can open a session in a private window if it was saved from a regular window, but a session saved from a private window has no tabs.

I assume that saving sessions from private windows should not be allowed, as the session is not private if it can be opened in a regular window.

[DoctorG]

@satamnesiac You can not save sessions in Private Window, that is a known bug.

[Satamnesiac]

@doctorg yet under 4.x I categorically and absolutely was. (Which I pointed out in the text of my post)

It would be helpful if you could let me know the reference of the bug report if there is one open and for what versions and OS.

[Satamnesiac]

@pesala Interesting, I was opening a session I had previously saved into a session from a private window on 4.x. I hadn't considered the save behaviour would also change.

OK so I tested - The behaviour for me under 5 is that when I click on Just This Window when attempting to save a session from a private window saving it saves the tabs from the previously open non private window. I assume you only had a private window open in your test hence the empty session.

So it seems to me that functionality from 4 has been lost in 5. Having read the page on how session management uses the underlying Chrome functionality I'm not sure why this behaviour would happen as the part of the browser managing multiple sessions seems to be entirely in the Vivaldi layer.

I understand why automatic save and restore of a session would ignore the private window. What I don't understand is why a feature to explicitly allow saving of sessions would not save tabs you actually want to save.

Thank you for your time, much appreciated.

[valiowk]

@doctorg Is it actually being tracked as a bug at present since @ROTFL mentioned that VB-84065 was closed as Invalid and I don't know whether he submitted a new bug report?

[DoctorG]

@valiowk I think, the bug is that you can create a session in a Private Window.

[DoctorG]

But this bug is confirmed
VB-84007 "Can't save tabs as sessions from private windows"

[ROTFL]

@Pesala It was possible since... always (1.x)
It worked perfectly until last snapshots (worked fine in 4.3 release)

@Satamnesiac I can feel your pain...

I use Private window when I need 2 independent sessions to some service or to just browse some private stuff on not mine computer.
Sometimes I need to keep stuff open despite forced restarts and for this purpose saving sessions in private window was the perfect choice

This problem also broke "Autosave Sessions" mod
https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/528115

[Pesala]

@rotfl said in Help! Unable to restore Saved Session to Private Window in Vivaldi 5.:

@Pesala It was possible since... always (1.x)

That is why I (like DoctorG) think that it is an intentional change. If someone is using a private window, presumably they don't want other users of the computer to know which sites they were browsing? If they save a session, only tabs from non-private windows are saved now.

That seems like a worthwhile improvement to me. One might forget that sessions could reveal their private activity.

[valiowk]

@pesala I can understand not saving private windows if "Save Only Tabs in Current Window" is not selected, but if a user chooses "Save Only Tabs in Current Window" for a private window, I think it is pretty clear the user knows what they want to get into. A lot of users use private windows for the automatic cookies clearing feature or because they need to use two accounts on the same site simultaneously, and not because they want to keep their work private from other users of their computer.

[ROTFL]

@valiowk Indeed

@Pesala If this is an intentional change why the session is saved anyway instead of message "you cannot save private sessions" or why saving option is not disabled completly in private window?
For me session without any content looks like a bug.

Anyway - I can understand arguments of some people and potential safety reasons here but if people use this functionality why not make it an optional? Like checkbox in settings "allow saving sessions in private windows". Vivaldi is not known from removing functionality "because they don't like it"

Keep in mind that for some users private window is a poor man's multi-account container

[Satamnesiac]

@rotfl said in Help! Unable to restore Saved Session to Private Window in Vivaldi 5.:

Keep in mind that for some users private window is a poor man's multi-account container

Exactly, that is indeed one of my use-cases. I use a shared Amazon account with my wife for things we might purchase and a separate one of my own so I can buy her things which arrive as a surprise just as a simple example.
There are others.

It's not a total disaster to have to save a private window to a bookmark tab, restore that to a private window (which works so rather undermines the "keeping the user from hurting themselves" argument) and then deleting the bookmark but the sessions feature was neater.

[ROTFL]

Saving sessions in private windows has been fixed in 2512.3 (Snapshot) / 5.0.2497.28 (Stable)

[Satamnesiac]

@rotfl Good news let's hope it also fixes the other change I only noticed yesterday - when I tried to re-open a tab I'd closed accidentally in a private window... only to find the list of closed tabs didn't include the private window anymore!

[zzed]

Was this really fixed? I just tried on 5.0.2497.35 (Stable channel) (arm64) and it still seems to have the behavior described in the OP.

[pafflick]

@zzed It works fine here. When opening a saved session from a private window, the session is restored in a new private window (that was always the case, IIRC).
Tested in Vivaldi 5.0.2497.38 (64-bit on Windows 10 ver. 21H2)

[zzed]

@pafflick Interesting, so I tried on a Windows pc and it does seem to work as expected.
On my mac (I'm running macOS 12.1), when I choose the "Save All Tabs as Session..." from the File menu while focused on the Private window, it still forces the focus back onto the non-Private window.

[Satamnesiac]

Agreed, this defect is not fixed in OSX. I'm running
Vivaldi 5.1.2567.39 (Stable channel) (x86_64) on
macOS Version 10.15.7 (Build 19H1713)

• You cannot save a private window session
  When saving the private session the focus reverts to the last open non private window

• You cannot restore a private window session

Also I've noticed that the "trash bin" in the top right of the private window doesn't retain closed tabs which makes showing it in a private window utterly pointless. This seems to be the case on both Windows and OSX (I've not tried on Linux yet).

I suspect that the testing of defects doesn't happen on OSX machines and there's something in the build process for the OSX versions that means code changes don't propagate properly.

The handling of private non-private windows in OSX with Vivaldi is a bit of a joke based on my experience so far. It certainly looks like the OSX version doesn't have a proper regression test suite and is compiled and released on a hope for the best basis.

It certainly makes me start reconsidering Vivaldi - which is a shame but this type of thing calls into question the quality of the product overall and for something closed source with a supposed privacy focus says to me that I can't be sure of the code quality across the whole product.

[Satamnesiac]

@pafflick try actually testing on the platform that's being discussed!