Session windows

[bbondy]

Repurpose multi user support for session windows.

[bbondy]

Moved to backlog.

[bsclifton]

If we integrate session tabs with regular tabs, we should check out brave/browser-laptop#7783 for feedback about how to make the experience better than browser-laptop

Issue brave/browser-laptop#5643 from browser-laptop suggests giving a common color to session tabs (browser-laptop already shows the session number)

Issue brave/browser-laptop#10539 suggests giving a session tab (or window) a name

[bsclifton]

Per brave/browser-laptop#13094, there should be specific shortcuts for opening session tabs / windows

[bsclifton]

Per brave/browser-laptop#7417, users should be able to choose a session (numbered or named? depends on what we decide) when bookmarking a site

[bsclifton]

Per brave/browser-laptop#788, users should be able to choose a session (numbered or named?) when opening a link via context menu (ex: open link in new session tab X)

[kelna]

I just moved to this new Chrome-based production version from the Muon-based one and I sadly noticed that session tabs are gone. This was one of the best productivity features of Brave and the one because of which I sticked to Brave in spite of the many bugs and glitches. The Chrome-based is very shiny and promising but session tabs would be an important feature to implement IMO. Thanks for the great work!

[webserviceXXL]

I agree the sessions tabs feature is a truly USP of Brave.

But have in mind that session tabs and session windows are a totally different thing. I saw that the Issues brave/browser-laptop#10539 was closed because of this Issue and I just want to be sure, that all got the difference. Please don't mix them.

Sessions windows are already possible with many other browsers like Chrome. You have different users for different windows. In this case all the settings (bookmarks, add ons, ...) are separated. So if you want to use a plugin with both sessions you have to install that twice.

With sessions tabs, just the session information are separated. Bookmarks, add ons and so on will be the same. So it's much easier to handle different accounts in the same environment. A good example is Firefox. Search for the "firefox multi account container". They work like a charm. They are colored, the can have custom names, and also the UI settings up the container ist quite nice.

Really looking forward for a feature like this in Brave.

@bsclifton Is there something I can support you with?

BTW: @kelna The sessions tabs are working with the chromium version. I use 0.25.2 on a Mac and the sessions tabs are working fine.

[AbirRazzak]

While I can see the valid point of having Session windows as opposed to tabs, it would be great if there could at least be an option to have them as tabs, or at least design the UX to where they are in the same Window. I don't like the idea of having a separate window for each of my different sessions, I prefer to have them all in the same window as I currently do in Firefox.

[bridiver]

@AbirRazzak the problem is that implementing session tabs is substantially more complicated because of the way chromium internals are designed. It's not a UX driven decision, it's just not practical to implement it any other way at least in the near term. Having said that, there have been some recent and upcoming changes that might allow us to implement them using a different mechanism that what we used in muon so that might reopen some possibilities for session tabs vs windows

[sandorex]

I do not want to spam useless messages but is there any progress or news on this?

[themotu]

I gave up on this and went back to Firefox because they have it natively with workspaces now. We don’t want a chrome only world anyway.

[brandonkal]

I haven't used this, but it looks like it is possible to have Session Tabs with Chromium. The first chromium browser to implement this natively will be my new daily driver.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sessionbox-free-multi-log/megbklhjamjbcafknkgmokldgolkdfig?hl=en

[jonathanKingston]

@brandonkal I reviewed SessionBox a long time ago however I suspect nothing has changed. The code looks a whole lot like containers to the user however the guarantees are very different. The code polyfills prototypes in the DOM using content scripts rather than real isolation in the browser.

[ghost]

I've seen a lot of people saying that this is blocked by chromium's design, while that might be the case, it should also be of consideration that the majority of Google's profit comes from ads and therefor analytics as well, this might be completely disregarded by the chromium team as a non-feature, so we shouldn't wait for them to support that.

Besides that, I do completely agree this is one of the most important features Brave should have.

[andreiepure]

I cannot use Brave browser without a "Firefox Multi-Account Containers"-like feature. Either porting the firefox addon for Brave, or having it built-in.

I see that #6346 has been closed as a duplicate of this one.

[cmattern]

Upvoting this again. We are degoogloing in our hosuhold, like what Brave does for us but need session windows.

[mrpeu]

I guess it's just cosmetic in Chrome, but they have tab grouping. It works pretty well and that's how I dream the Brave sessions to be (as it was in the early days 🧓)

https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/manage-tabs-with-google-chrome/

Edit: I realize that's about "tabs", different than "window". But I'd prefer tabs anyway as they're more flexible than windows since they can be dragged out as windows...

[tazihad]

We need this feature.

[acheong08]

Still waiting for it

[szaimen]

Actually, I don't think that the Brave team will be able to implement this as long as Chromium team doesn't implement it upstream because it would most likely introduce too many needed patches that would would become big blockers for the Brave team when performing any chromium update.

[bridiver]

@szaimen that is true to some degree, but I think session windows (vs tabs) is a more viable option and some recent changes (allowing more than one private profile per regular profile) could open up the door for this, but it's still tricky because having private session windows isn't very useful so they'd still have to map to persistent partitions. A much simpler option would be to just use storage partitions directly, but unfortunately the current methods don't provide enough information to distinguish which tabs/windows are making the requests.

[mikedoth]

For the moment when I do use Chrome I have started using tab groups, and combined with MultiLogin extension. Not a perfect solution but it seems to work. I think the request for this type of functionality is mostly geared towards tech/programming people and will probably need to be done at a core level like in Firefox. That said, would probably bring me back to webkit based browser since I use it a lot.

[pes10k]

How similar is this feature to #15018, which would allow users to say "dont ever persistently store 1p storage for this site, always make it ephemeral (the same way we do for 3p storage on all sites)".

It wouldn't scratch the itch for having multiple, simultaneous, persistent storage areas, but it 1) is something we could do sooner rather than later (we need the functionality for other purposes), and 2) would solve at least many of the use cases given here.

[NumDeP]

@pes10k I think it is more so similar to Allow private tabs to use different sessions (partitions) than anything else. At which point I think 'Add option for ephemeral 1p storage #15018' is redundant, don't you think?

[pes10k]

I don't believe thats right @NumDeP , there are uses where we want to more tightly isolate storage for 1p than per tab. One example is include bounce tracking protections. We also want to deploy these protections in typical browsing in a range of situations. In general, #15018 is not similar to the issue you linked to, if we closed #776 it wouldn't remove the need for #15018

[mrpeu]

How similar is this feature to #15018, which would allow users to say "dont ever persistently store 1p storage for this site, always make it ephemeral (the same way we do for 3p storage on all sites)".

It wouldn't scratch the itch for having multiple, simultaneous, persistent storage areas, but it 1) is something we could do sooner rather than later (we need the functionality for other purposes), and 2) would solve at least many of the use cases given here.

It's closed technically. But it's a lot of micro-management to decide which website to apply that constraint to and when. A non-IT person would rarely use this. Where sand-boxed tab-groups would be usable by non-techies.
It would be a real incognito mode though, at least how incognito is perceived.

I might be going off-topic and don't know the browser's internals but I dream about:

• tabs in general just be docked windows (or vice-versa: windows to be detached tabs).
• tab-groups be sand-boxes, persistent
• Add option for users to visit a site in ephemeral 1p storage #15018 would not be needed per se as a tab-group could be used for this purpose

[bridiver]

Just a reminder that issues are for discussing features. If you would like to discuss which browser you think is better or anything not directly related to the implementation of this feature, there are plenty of other public forums you can have those discussions in.