Hi there!

Let me make sure I answer all of your questions:

1. Unfortunately, you seem to have discovered one of the edge cases where the new per-window private browsing doesn't work well with your workflow, since you have local bookmarks that you open locally. Indeed, it appears that local desktop bookmark files are opened in the main (non-privacy) window. It might be worth filing a bug about this, but I don't know how high priority this would be to fix as it's an edge case. Have you considered just dragging these bookmarks into the Private Browsing window instead?

2. Downloads in Private Browsing aren't shown in the normal downloads list. They're listed on their own, but only for that private session. Once you close that window and open a new private window, any records of that download is gone (except of course that the file you downloaded will be on your disk unless you remove it!).

3. When you close a window in Firefox while still having other windows open, you need to restore those windows from the History menu. This article shows you how: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-restore-my-tabs-last-time?esab=a&s=restore+window&r=1&as=s#w_restore-the-previous-session-from-the-history-menu

Thanks for your feedback and for using Firefox! Sorry that your workflow has been impacted by the recent change. It was a popular request from users to get per-window private browsing, but if you're managing a list of local bookmarks that you want to click on, I can see how this made things worse.

One thing you might want to consider if you're into locally stored data is to create a new Firefox profile and use that as your "private browsing" profile. That way you could store that profile along with your bookmarks that I assume you keep hidden somewhere, and then just turn off Firefox completely and launch with this special profile any time you want to go incognito. This article introduces you to the concept of profiles: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?esab=a&s=managing+profiles&r=0&as=s#os=win7&browser=fx20

Cheers, David

I came here looking for solutions to problems 1 and 3 myself--unfortunate to see this is intentional behavior.

I can adapt to not being able to open a private Firefox window to start on the occasions I prefer to do so, that's not a big deal (in spite of the fact I can do that in all the other browsers.)

However, losing my session in the standard Firefox window if I choose to close that while a private window is open? This really is bizarre. Private is intended to be a completely separate mode with no crossover or connection to the regular browser window, so it seems odd that on its next startup, Firefox would refuse to recognize the last regular session. I really hope the devs take it under consideration to change this behavior in a future update.

I appreciate Firefox, I'm still using Firefox, but I find I'm using Google Chrome (Chromium, actually) more and more as it just fits my workflow better. Of course the workarounds available in Firefox are fine, good to know they're there, but the other browsers just work as you'd expect without this strange logic. In my opinion, Mozilla is making a mistake with these deviations.

This has been disabled deliberately and the only way to open external links in a New Private Window seems to be by dragging a link in an open Private Browsing window.
It doesn't even work with the -private-window command line switch.
This still opens the link in a normal window, so you get two windows, one normal window with the link and an empty private window.

• Bug 829180 - Externally opened urls may open in private browsing windows
• Bug 856839 - External Links Always Open in A New Non-Private Window

(please do not comment in bug reports: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)