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This, for me, is one of the most important features out of a modern browser. The short of it is that it allows you to very quickly sandbox the web and run multiple websites in differing states.

In FireFox, which I think is the best implementation of this, all; web session data, cookies, etc. are housed within a user curated container. You can have one for work, personal use, shopping, banking, etc. and choose whether to permanently assign website to 'always open' in the specified container or just a one of instance.

This is fantastic for managing Google and other service logins between work and personal, purely based on what container the browser was told to open the website in.

The key bullet points Mozilla use for the feature are a pretty good reflection on the use case:

  • Sign in to two different accounts on the same site (for example, you could sign in to work email and home email in two different Container tabs.
  • Keep different kinds of browsing far away from each other (for example, you might use one Container tab for managing your Checking Account and a different Container tab for searching for new songs by your favorite band)
  • Avoid leaving social-network footprints all over the web (for example, you could use a Container tab for signing in to a social network, and use a different tab for visiting online news sites, keeping your social identity separate from tracking scripts on news sites)

I would love to see this implemented in a browser as performant as this one 👍️ although I could imagine it being a lot of work creating the required abstraction layer, probably more a wedge, between the current methods being used to cache and store web session data before even approaching the task of adding in the UI/UX side of things.

We have this speced out but development will take a long time (very complex feature) and we prioritize hundreds of smaller bugs right now.

I created an account just to give input for this thread.

I currently use Brave which uses Chrome profiles (since its a Chromium branch). I think this is fine for most users as its easy to understand as it acts like a user login, which everyone is familiar with. I think containers are really cool though. Its almost like a magic trick to be able to have different identities in two separate tabs without having to switch users! I would love to see Profiles immediately implemented and Containers some time down the line as its a more advanced frature.

I was surprised that Orion didn’t have any profile support but I guess it makes sense since its built off Webkit. This unfortunately is a show-stopper for me though as I use many profiles. There are a lot of companies that will host browser sessions in the cloud that prevent fingerprinting (Gologin,VMMask, Hydraproxy, etc) and the monthly fees are really high but for many users its worth it!

The way I see it, Orion should put Profiles at the top of the list to create a killer app.

Profiles WITH separate syncing for each profile - Currently the only syncing that exists with Chrome Profiles is when logged into Google for each profile. All this work to then have to trust the devil to be able to get syncing! The syncing should be at the browser level, not the search engine level.

Orion should then partner with a proxy service.

With browser level syncing, built in proxy and fingerprint blocking, Orion effectively replaces Gologin and all the other paid services. Out the door Orion could charge a monthly fee for these services and all of the affiliate and other similar use types would use it instead.

I think the Orion devs thought that the killer app would be extensions and fingerprint blocking but those are features. The true magic happens with profiles (and containers for more advanced users).

If Orion did this and allowed users like myself to contribute even a portion of the money that is going to these other companies ($100/mo per user with some companies needed dozens of licenses) then it could immediately hire a dozen developers and make short work of the remaining features needed.

Id love to see Orion be the new Firefox and its all within its grasp if it plays its cards right.

Vlad I don't want to speak for marcusquinn and I might have misinterpreted his intent, but being familiar with that Vivaldi thread already, my immediate takeaway from seeing that thread being referenced was, "Yeah, Orion's already working on this – has it marked as 'planned' – and Vivaldi hardly even responds to the thread after all this time." Mind you, I like Vivaldi a lot – it and Firefox have been my primary browsers for some time – and I understand that there are technical difficulties involved in implementing the feature. But I really appreciate you taking the time to communicate its status. Orion's looking really promising, and has become one of my primary browsers even while still in beta. (I'm not really looking to replace Firefox or Vivaldi overall, but rather to have different browsers for different uses. Much like using different tab containers and different profiles.)

  • Vlad replied to this.

    Jack_R Profiles are coming first to Orion. Containers (in Orion will call them Sessions) will came later this year.

      3 months later

      It would be great if there is a way to have containers by company with external list. Think about website specific containers which can share not just their domain's data but of all domains in a list.

      Then we can have community supplied list of websites to group them into containers.

      For example, we can put gmail, google and youtube by default into one google container to share the login information (you can modify this to have separate containers), but if we open another website, it goes into its own container.

      It is a pain creating containers and grouping for everywebsite. If we can share the container grouping as a community, it will make containers very painless.

        Each person will use containersdifferently from everyone else, and it would be a bad idea to force users to use a very stringent default

        You can easily make a container for all of your google stuff. not sure why it would be very difficult (supposing ur using ff containers)

          I want the ability to have these lists of website container combos something that I can subscribe to. You can decide if you want to subscribe or roll out your own

            u can make a separate post for this

              2 months later

              While the idea is well-intentioned, it’s possible to shoot yourself in the foot as well. Web services can easily tie your accounts together if you quickly switch between them within the same browser, same OS etc. without taking any other measures. Whatever approach this browser takes it’s better not to over-promise and have a warning to anyone relying on these measures for anything important. For casual use though it should be fine…

              Integrating support for some sort of cloud session (as in https://orionfeedback.org/d/43-something-like-firefox-multi-account-containers-by-default/26) could address that, but only if it could be easily self-hosted (third party hosted services are hard to trust).

                13 days later

                since this browser is geared towards privacy, it would be extremely nice to be able to have multiple sessions at the same time of the same website, to separate tabs into e.g. work profile or other like "shopping", this feature separates mostly cookies, but firefox might be doing even more besides that?

                  Merged 1 post from Container tabs like firefox.
                    15 days later

                    Hey everyone,

                    I think it’s my first time posting, I will try being more active here in the future.

                    Really love what you are trying to accomplish with Orion and Kagi Vlad and your team !

                    I’ll try to support you as much as I can.

                    I also wanted to say that I also find those features, profiles (sessions ?) and containers very useful.

                    I’m just here to give it my upvote 🤓

                      CharlieCortial We have a plan for implementing this. It will be called Session tabs. We just need to make careful UI choices as Orion has tab groups, soon profiles and then session tabs. It can be too much for new users to handle.

                        Vlad No problem, I’m very curious what this future feature will be, but I understand it’s really complicated to do.
                        You’re doing a terrific job 💪

                          8 days later

                          Now that Profiles are up and running, can this mean that Multi Accounts Containers are in development?

                          • eirk replied to this.