In case you don’t know, Mozilla Firefox on the desktop & its forks (LibreWolf, Floorp, etc.) can isolate browsing data (not sure of this) and login sessions/cookies (definitely sure of this) via containers using the Firefox Multi-Account Containers & forcing any particular website to open in a specific Container of your choosing to not share browsing info between sites.
I wonder if there is the equivalent that on mobile - Android, in particular.
My use case for this is minimize the number of social apps installed on my phone (Facebook-related apps, LinkedIn, etc.); have them all by a privacy-first mobile browser with ad-blocker like uBlock Origin, and be logged into them automatically (can be by password manager like KeepassDX, or not clearing either the website’s cookies or each container’s on browser exit).
On my desktops, I’ve already implemented this setup on my Linux machines, and thus I have no need for installing any social apps on my computers & let them do their privacy-invasive background tasks sans my knowledge (though this may be just me).
One mobile, however, I’ve found no viable browser with an extension capable of doing this - not even Firefox on Android with its forks (Fennec, IronFox, etc.) - that I’m stuck with any of these alternate solutions:
Install multiple FOSS Chromium browsers (Brave, Cromite, etc.) and stay logged in on each website on any of these browsers (while clearing browser data on every other site)
Open each social app on separate Android user profiles + Work Profile (works, but inconvenient juggling to various profiles for just one or two apps)
Wait for a mature Linux phone to show up, buy it & install Firefox (or LibreWolf) there, and install the extension mentioned above
Based on my personal assessment, the solution I have for my desktops is not available on mobile (Android). I just wanna ask here if anyone may possibly know a browser or extension that does what I’m looking for.
Although not directly relevant, I’d like to share one cool perk regarding the Containers extension by Firefox that I always love to see elsewhere, even on mobile:
Always Open Site in Container X
You explicitly dictate which website is exclusively associated with what container
Which means and website NOT FOUND on this whitelist will be booted out & be opened to a non-containerized tab
Which then concludes that that site’s cookies are isolated from unwanted websites!
If there ever were a mobile browser with a Containers extension, I’d be a very happy user if this small feature is included too
Only thing is that it doesn’t seem to be open-source (not something I’d trust keeping my accounts logged in).
And it’s only officially available for download at the App Store & Google Play Store (no presence in F-Droid or elsewhere whatsoever), so there’s a possible concern that their privacy features (adding custom site blocklists & URL tracking protection, for example) may be neutered in the future if they’re under pressure by these app store publishers.
And with it not being open-source, the user can only base their trust on this browser’s promise of delivering their promises of privacy (& security) based on their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service (which has always been subject to changes that not everyone knows how to opt-out from).
Does Hermit potentially meet my needs? Right now, Yea!
Will it keep meeting it long-term? With being closed-source, who knows
