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private window vs never remember history

Glaskir
Glaskir
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Hi,

You are saying in your articles that using the "never remember history" setting is basically the same as having an private windows open.

I did a quick test and could right away spot a difference. When I open a private window and log in into my gmail email account, I can just close the window (and not quitting mozilla - I am a mac user) and even I didn't log out, when I open a new private window gmail will not log me in or remember my username. If I do the same using the never remember history, gmail logs me in.

I am looking for a way how to have mozilla to open a private window automatically without needing to select the private window option.

Hi, You are saying in your articles that using the "never remember history" setting is basically the same as having an private windows open. I did a quick test and could right away spot a difference. When I open a private window and log in into my gmail email account, I can just close the window (and not quitting mozilla - I am a mac user) and even I didn't log out, when I open a new private window gmail will not log me in or remember my username. If I do the same using the never remember history, gmail logs me in. I am looking for a way how to have mozilla to open a private window automatically without needing to select the private window option.

All Replies (1)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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This is a little hard to explain, but when you start up Firefox normally, your regular (non-private) windows all share one cookie jar. When you open a private window, it starts a second cookie jar for the private windows. If you keep that private window open and open a second one, you'll see that sites you logged into in the first private window are also logged in in the second private window. Only when you close all the private windows does the second cookie jar get destroyed.

You can set Firefox to start up in a private window (no regular windows), but you will not be able to use the same trick of having two cookie jars because all the private windows will share one cookie jar. You would have to completely quit out of Firefox to destroy that cookie jar. Does that make sense?

This article has a section on how to set up automatic private browsing on the Preferences page, Privacy panel: Private Browsing - Use Firefox without saving history -- the "Can I set Firefox to always use Private Browsing?" section.