Containers: The ultimate multitask
tl;dr: I started using Firefox Multi-Account Containers and they are tremendously helpful for me, as a person with a rich tapestry of interests and employs.
As a small business owner, writer, and freelancer, I’ve usually got a lot of Google Drives, email inboxes, and account profiles open at one time. It’s not possible to be logged into many places in one browser (or wasn’t), so this was my solution:
Firefox Dev Edition (left) was for Mozilla stuff, Firefox Nightly* (center) was for my book, and Google Chrome (right) was for Outlaw Soaps. Of course, this was when I was being “good.” That was “organized.” What happened in reality was that I’d be always logging in and out of accounts for whichever I wanted to use at the time.
I used Google Drive and Gmail for all three of these, and had separate Outlook email accounts for my writing and Outlaw Soaps. Keeping them separate was really frustrating. If you’re logged into one gmail account, and someone sends you a link to a document in a different gmail account, google doesn’t believe you have permissions. I can’t tell you how many times someone would send me a link to a Google doc, I’d try to open it, and I’d get this error message:
I’d have to go to Google Drive (or Gmail, whichever was open), log out of one account, and log in to the account with permissions. It was a big ol’ pain in the butt. If I was in the middle of something in the other account, or if (as usual), I had a bunch of tabs open in that account, which I suddenly would lose permission to.
I have ADD, so I am always in the middle of like 6 things. I actually work best that way, since it seems to force me to focus. But losing permission to half of my tabs really screwed me up. How could I even remember what tabs had been open? Blergh.
When Firefox Multi-Account Containers (aka “Containers”) came to Firefox Nightly, the life-changing implication immediately hit me: I could now be as ADD as I wanted to be, and Google’s tight user account control wouldn’t screw up my life.
In fact, it was even bigger than I initially thought. Once I started using Containers, I started putting everything in containers. It was glorious!
What are containers?
Containers allow you to have isolated instances of your browser tabs. For example, I have outlawsoaps(at)gmail.com, refreshinglynormal(at)gmail.com, and my Mozilla email address.
OutlawSoaps Google Drive has Outlaw Soaps stuff (which is shared across several computers and employees), so it contains things like our pricing documents, samples sent, sales reports, forecasts, and batch info for our colognes.
RefreshinglyNormal Google Drive has my personal and writing stuff, which even includes personal information like several drafts of several books (writers understand), our budget, and articles I’m working on.
My Mozilla account also uses Google Drive, and we share project briefs, forecasts, and proposals.
None of these would be appropriate to share across accounts, which is why I used to have all those browsers open all the time. If I accidentally shared something from my personal account with my Mozilla account, whoopsie! I have, on more than one occasion, accidentally requested access to a doc from the wrong Google account, without realizing I was logged in. Embarrassing. So I tried my best to keep everything tidily in its appropriate little slot.
How do Containers work?
Containers do not allow for the share of information between tabs from other containers, so you can be logged in to multiple accounts at one time with one browser.
Containers also keep cookies and all logins separate, which has great implications for people who have a rich tapestry of personas. When I worked at Disney, for example, I had two of practically every social media account… one for “work friends” and one for “friend friends.”
Each container is color coded, so you can see at-a-glance what tabs are owned by which container.
Setting up Containers
First, you must install the Firefox Multi-Account Containers extension.
This gives you a cute little Containers icon in the upper right corner:
Clicking on that icon shows you available Containers (which you can customize). Here are mine:
You can set up containers for whatever you want.
When a tab is within a container, you’ll see the container identified in the address bar:
And you’ll also notice that each tab has an underline of its specific container. Tabs without a container don’t have an underline.
Sometimes (like, always), I forget to open a tab in a container. For this, I use the “Switch Container” extension. This is the fix for when someone sends me a link via Slack and I get the “you don’t have permission” error message from above. I just change containers to “Mozilla” and voila! I have access!
Other fun stuff Containers can do
I hang out in a lot of video conferences, and sometimes I even share my screen. If you share your screen in video conferences, you may have noticed that everyone in the meeting can see all the other tabs that you have open… not professional.
If you want to create a window of only one container (you know, so you can share your screen and switch between work-related tabs, while keeping the rest of your life behind-the-scenes), you can open all the tabs of one container type in a new window:
You may have also noticed in that animated gif that you can hide all containers of a certain type. *cough* <air quotes> A certain type.</air quotes> *cough*
Really, Containers are the newest “killer app” to me (though it’s not technically an app, I mean this in the way that people call email the original “killer app”). I look forward to seeing how they evolve next.
Download recommendations:
Download Firefox Dev Edition
Get the Firefox Multi-Account Containers Add-on
Get the Switch Containers Add-on for Firefox
*I use Firefox Nightly because I work for Firefox and I like to help them test builds by using it rather than the regular Firefox.
