Add ability to reorganize Containers

[gwynnarth]

It would be useful if users could change the order of Containers after they are created.

[jonathanKingston]

I actually think this could be solved with drag and drop when in edit mode using the browser action.

We would need some form of index adding to the storage to remember what to display them into though.

[erickt]

It would also be nice to alphabetically sort the containers. I use a lot of containers to manage a bunch of Amazon environments, so it's always a bit of a pain to find the right one.

[billturk]

Yes being able to alphabetically sort the containers would help a lot!!!

[bluke]

This will also need to allow to change the position of the default contianer compared to other containers.

[smichel17]

Perhaps it would make more sense to add this functionality to about:preferences#containers ?

For search visibility: arrange, rearrange, reorder

[Narvey]

Yes @smichel17 , we should be able to manually order our containers, and have that affect the Sort Containers button (which seems to be useless at the moment, somebody correct me if I'm wrong).

[t4777sd]

Definitely agree. Not being able to sort the containers makes them a lot more difficult to work with.

[psychoslave]

I use containers as tabgroups replacement, I already defined more the 30 containers and I only use them since yersterday. Grouping alphabeticaly would be fine for me as I use a "theme/subtheme" nomemclature, however being able to drag&drop to move them around would be a big plus.

Note really the issue topic, but being able to switch context and only display included tabs with one click would be great. The current behaviour seems to be "open a new tab in this container" which is really odd for my use. To achieve what I want to do, I have to go in the target container submenu, select one tab, then go back to the container menu, find the container I no longer want to display, go in the submenu and finally hide it. What I'm accustomed to with the grouptabs was "drop down list of group, select, tada" for the same result.

Having better isolation is fine, but in my priority list it's really far, far, far behind being able to easily switch context, that is having a group of tabs.

[RadonX]

@psychoslave You will like this addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/conex/

[psychoslave]

Thank you @RadonX for the suggestion. I already tested it, but it seems that currently it brings only more clutter in the toobar with 0 additional feature until some bug is fixed.

[br3n065]

I've deleted/repurposed far to many containers, an option to rearrange them manually or alphabetically would be awesome.

[o-l-a-v]

Please implement this. Either alphabetically or custom/ manually, or both.
To only sort by creation time, is pretty useless.

[Paarmita]

I think this will be better with drag and drop feature and initially arranging the containers in alphabetical order, it will provide a smooth and good UI/UX also.

[jonathanKingston]

@Paarmita the only problem is some of the menus come from Firefox itself so you would have to add an index to the internal storage and sort those menus the same.

[franzjschneider]

Hard to believe it's 2019 and we're still asking for something so simple and such a no-brainer. I keep getting tempted to switch to Brave completely.

[JohnLGalt]

#1347 adds code for sorting alphabetically only, and while this is a step in the right direction, I think we need more.

Since editing the containers.json manually works perfectly, I've done it that way - but would be great to see it in the UI itself.

[franzjschneider]

After way too long a wait and a struggle to find a replacement, I ditched this extension for Simple Tab Groups. Worth the switch. It's a great extension with a good level of customization, organization, and sorting for groups. Great in combination with SortTabs for also sorting tabs by different criteria.

Simple Tab Groups by Drive4ik:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/

[pethron]

Consider adding sorting and grouping

[lindhe]

I like your suggestion, @pethron , but I suggest that goes as a separate PR as to not delay this even more.

[perlancar]

For those that find a PowerShell script in #1208 (a duplicate of this issue) useful: you might also want to consider an equivalent (but slightly enhanced) CLI script I've written in Perl: https://metacpan.org/pod/firefox-mua-sort-containers . It lets you sort the containers quite flexibly. I've also blogged about it.

[MurzNN]

Additionally Multi-Account Containers popup, other place for implement reordering feature can be about:preferences#containers - in this place I already can mass remove containers via single clicks, instead of "long click quest" at Multi-Account Containers popup. But seems this page is generated via build-in Firefox functional, not via this extension?

[zanona]

By having a look at @perlancar suggestion and analysing the source, I was able to manually edit ~/.mozilla/firefox/profile.default/containers.json file (you may need to adjust the path for this file depending on your platform).

I'm not completely sure yet if changing this had any negative effect besides the ones mentioned below, so please, beware.

{
  "version": 4,
  "lastUserContextId": 4,
  "identities": [
    { "name": "userContextIdInternal.webextStorageLocal", "userContextId": 4294967295, "public": false, "icon": "", "color": "", "accessKey": "" },
    { "name": "userContextIdInternal.thumbnail", "userContextId": 4294967296, "public": false, "icon": "", "color": "", "accessKey": "" },
    { "name": "Personal", "userContextId": 1, "public": true, "icon": "fingerprint", "color": "blue" },
    { "name": "Shopping", "userContextId": 2, "public": true, "icon": "cart", "color": "orange" },
    { "name": "Crypto", "userContextId": 3, "public": true, "icon": "dollar", "color": "orange" },
    { "name": "Other", "userContextId": 4, "public": true, "icon": "chill", "color": "blue" }
  ]
}

So, by manually sorting the array and restarting Firefox, the container order has been adjusted accordingly.
I've noticed that it's not needed to change the userContextId in order to make it work.
And a big disclaimer: after doing this, the cookies I had saved for each tab no longer were present, so I had to sign in to the sites I was logged in previously. Not sure what caused this, but it's important to let you know.

Relation between assigned sites and container, also seemed to get confused, but probably that's because I've changed the userContextIds

Also, you'd need to reassign your shortcuts in case you had it configured under the extension preferences. However, for an improved behaviour and not opening a new tab every time you switch context, I would recommend easy container shortcuts extension instead.

And finally, as @MurzNN suggested, this is also reflected under about:preferences#containers

[Tyler-2]

And a big disclaimer: after doing this, the cookies I had saved for each tab no longer were present, so I had to sign in to the sites I was logged in previously. Not sure what caused this, but it's important to let you know.

Would that be because the cookies are store for like... Identities[0], Identities[1], etc? Seems like a bigger impact of this would be that the new site at [0] would have access to the old [0] site's cookies! But... I'm just guessing.

[zanona]

Would that be because the cookies are store for like... Identities[0], Identities[1], etc? Seems like a bigger impact of this would be that the new site at [0] would have access to the old [0] site's cookies! But... I'm just guessing.

I found out that tweaking the userContextId, specially for userContextIdInternal.thumbnail and userContextIdInternal.webextStorageLocal wasn't a good idea at all. Moving them around by adjusting the position you want in the array is really not a problem, though.

I have tried in many ways after that, and keeping userContextId as is, didn't introduce any problems. At least this is how it stands for me so far. So I guess you are right, cookies are possibly being linked to the userContextId.

One example of linking a new tab to a container through an extension is given below, so it would make sense those are connected in a way, I guess?

source

    browser.tabs.create({
      cookieStoreId: context.cookieStoreId, //cookieStoreId belongs to context (container)
      index: currentTab.index + 1,
      url: currentTab.url
    });

[naamancampbell]

Yet another community solution (I am the author): ff-containers-sort - requires Python 3.6+

pip install ff-containers-sort

Features:

• alphabetical sorting of containers
• manual sorting mode
• safely updates containers.json after manual changes
• preserves Firefox private container objects
• creates backups of Firefox Container config prior to making changes
  • deletes backups older than 7 days
• tested on Linux, Windows & Mac

[maxxcrawford]

We merged in a feature to drag and drop the order of the containers!

Fixed by PR #1608

[hub2git]

@maxxcrawford
After updating to Firefox 85.0 on Linux, I now can sort the containers -- as they appear in the toolbar -- by drag and drop.

But the changes are not reflected when right-clicking a link on a webpage and hovering over "Open Link in New Container Tab".

[jonathanKingston]

The other bug should be closed. The work needs to happen in Firefox, for which there is a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1333395

Ideally this should have been developed at the same time.

[minhnhattonthat]

Is there a way to sort the No Container at the end instead of before all Containers?

[o-l-a-v]

PowerShell script to sort containers alphabetically

Click to expand

#Requires -Version 5.1
<#
    .SYNOPSIS
        Sort Mozilla Firefox containers alphabetically.

    .NOTES
        # Script info
        Author:   Olav Rønnestad Birkeland | github.com/o-l-a-v
        Created:  220522
        Modified: 220522

        # Resources
        * https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1333395
        * https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/330

    .EXAMPLE
        & $psISE.CurrentFile.FullPath
#>


# Input parameters
[OutputType($null)]
Param()


# PowerShell preferences
$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'
$InformationPreference = 'Continue'


# Close Firefox if running
Write-Information -MessageData 'Stop Firefox if running.'
Get-Process -Name 'firefox' -ErrorAction 'SilentlyContinue' | Stop-Process -Confirm:$true
$null = Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
if ($([array](Get-Process -Name 'firefox' -ErrorAction 'SilentlyContinue')).'Count' -gt 0) {
    Throw 'Firefox must be closed before proceeding.'
}


# Get file path
Write-Information -MessageData 'Get file path to containers.json.'
$ContainersFilePath = [string](
    Get-ChildItem -Path ('{0}\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles' -f $env:APPDATA) -Filter 'containers.json' -File -Recurse | `
        Sort-Object -Property 'LastWriteTime' -Descending | `
        Select-Object -ExpandProperty 'FullName' -First 1
)
Write-Information -MessageData ('Path: "{0}".' -f $ContainersFilePath)


# Get file content
Write-Information -MessageData 'Get file content.'
$Containers = [PSCustomObject](
    Get-Content -Raw -Path $ContainersFilePath -Encoding 'UTF8' | ConvertFrom-Json
)


# Sort
Write-Information -MessageData 'Sort containers.'
$Containers.'identities' = [PSCustomObject[]]($Containers.'identities' | Sort-Object -Property 'public', 'name')


# Set
Write-Information -MessageData 'Write changes to containers.json.'
$null = Set-Content -Path $ContainersFilePath -Value ($Containers | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 2 -Compress) -Force -Encoding 'UTF8' -NoNewline


# Done
Write-Information -MessageData 'Done.'

[an0key]

PowerShell script to sort containers alphabetically
Click to expand

This works well on a windows machine... was hoping that the change would sync via Mozilla/Firefox Sync, however the other machines (Macs) all seem to retain the original order.

[JohnLGalt]

Even on a new profile that you log in and sync with?

[FlominatorTM]

It would be cool if one would build a website, where you can paste the JSON and sort it, either manually or by attributes.

[blachawk]

whats the latest thoughts from the engineers behind this project?