Firefox private browsing directly
By Pierre-Yves on Tuesday, December 30 2014, 10:18 - Général - Permalink
I use the private mode of firefox quite often, for example when I want to test an application while being authenticated in one windown and not authenticated in another window.
I also use this mode when I want to browse some commercial websites that I know do a lot of tracking (hey there amazon!).
Finally, my firefox always have few windows and a bunch of tabs open and when traveling quite often I want to open firefox quickly to check something but I do not want to have it coming with all its windows and tabs.
Until now, I used either different browser or midori that allows starting it directly in private mode in these situations.
So this morning I took myself by the hand and looked closer at fixing my system for my use-case:
The recipe turned out to be pretty simple:
1/ Get the firefox.desktop file:
cp /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop ~/firefox-private.desktop
2/ Adjust it as follow:
-Name=Firefox +Name=Firefox (private browsing) [...] -Exec=firefox %u +Exec=firefox -private-window %u
3/ Install the new desktop file:
3.1/ In /usr/share/applications/
for every users on the system
sudo cp ~/firefox-private.desktop /usr/share/applications/
or
3.2/ In ~/.local/share/applications/
for your user only
sudo cp /.local/share/applications/
With this trick, you can now start firefox in private browsing mode directly from the menu.
Comments
You can simply create another profile and set it to "never remember anything." What's the difference between firefox -private-window vs set History to "Never remember anything"?
I find this to be easier than switching between profiles.
I think the private mode is similar or very close to a profile set to never remember anything with the addition that cookies are deleted when the window is closed, there is no history, no password, no forms pre-filled & so on.
You could probably achieve the same with 2 profils, but it would be more work :)