Comment by wsgeorge
1 day ago
But Firefox also has browser profiles now (something I wanted for so long I moved back to chrome to get it), so what’s the purpose of first-party containers now? Don’t browser profiles provide a more robust, very visible delineation between different accounts/user profiles?
Firefox has had profiles for a long time (via about:profiles and a command-line argument). Unfortunately, the new profiles are not compatible with the old ones and cannot be migrated.
Firefox added a layer on top to allow to show the list of profiles in the UI.
I recently started a new job and built 3 profiles on Windows, then switched to Ubuntu. The migration of my profiles was painful because of that new layer: migration of each profile was working fine, but didn't see each other.
Thankfully Claude was helpful to debug and fix the settings. I had to edit SQLite databases.
A profile is a full new browser, these containers are just tabs. So they mix into the current browser window.
They are much more lightweight, and the workflow is better, just switch tabs.