Passport Containers

Per-path container rules for Firefox that follow your Firefox account.
Plus real Firefox bookmark keywords, set straight from the toolbar.

 

Why

Multi-Account Containers maps a whole domain to one container. Containerise can do per-path rules, but they never leave the machine you typed them on. I wanted github.com/acme-corp in Work and the rest of GitHub in Personal, on every machine, without setting it up again each time.

Passport keeps the rules in storage.sync, which Firefox Sync carries with your account. Sign in on a new machine, install Passport, and the containers your rules name are created and the rules are already there. Containers nothing refers to are left alone, and deleting one in Firefox sticks. Runs in Firefox and Zen.

What it does

• Per-path rules. Host and path, a glob, or a regex over the full URL. The most specific rule wins.
• Synced everywhere. Rules, container colours and icons ride your Firefox account.
• Real Firefox keywords. Sign in with your Mozilla account (optional) and a keyword typed in the popup becomes a native bookmark keyword on every device.
• One-click setup from the popup. Rule, bookmark and keyword for the current site in one go.
• Several containers per site. ?passport=Work on a bookmark URL picks the container; the parameter is stripped before the site sees it.
• Reopen and pause. Move a tab to another container, or stop all routing until you resume.
• Renames follow. Rename a container in Firefox and the rules, keywords, bookmark hints and colours move with it, on every device.
• Problems view. Duplicate rules and keywords, broken regex, missing containers, keywords without a bookmark and bookmark hints that point nowhere are flagged. "Create missing bookmarks" on the Keywords tab fixes the last one.
• Backup and restore. Everything exports to one JSON file. Restore shows what it will change first, merge lets the file win where both have the same rule, and the last restore can be undone.

 

Rules

One per line, pattern , Container. Edit them on the settings page or add one from the popup.

github.com/acme-corp , Work                plain: host + path, segment boundaries
@app\.example\.com/\?account=2 , Client A  @ = regex on the full URL (sees the query)
!*.internal.example/* , Work               ! = glob on host + path
# comment

mail.google.com , Personal and mail.google.com/mail/u/1 , Work can live side by side in any order, since the longer pattern wins. A plain rule never matches on a query string, use @ for that. The container name Default forces the plain uncontained profile.

Keywords

Firefox has no extension API for bookmark keywords, so Passport has two ways of doing it.

With a Mozilla account (Settings, Mozilla account). You sign in on accounts.firefox.com with the standard OAuth flow (PKCE and a keys_jwk scoped key). Passport never sees your password, and the Sync key stays in local extension storage on that machine. A keyword typed in the popup is written into the bookmark's Firefox Sync record, and Firefox applies it as a native keyword on the next sync, which Passport triggers within seconds by editing a helper bookmark called "Passport sync". You get the address bar's top "Visit" suggestion, on every device. The code is in src/sync/.

Without an account. A bare word in the URL bar turns into a search on your default engine. Passport catches that request before it loads when the word is one of your keywords and opens the page in its container. Works with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Ecosia, Brave, Qwant, Yahoo, Yandex and Kagi. go mail works too.

Put %s in a keyword's URL and whatever follows the keyword fills it in: kgh my-repo with https://github.com/acme/%s. A keyword without %s ignores extra words and lets the search happen, so pnews weather is still a search.

Shortcuts

Rebind them in about:addons, gear menu, Manage Extension Shortcuts. The pause switch is also in the toolbar icon's right-click menu and shows an "II" badge while paused.

How it routes

A blocking webRequest listener looks at top-level navigations. If the tab is already in the right container nothing happens. Otherwise the request is cancelled and the URL reopens in a new tab in the right container, next to the old one. A fresh tab (about:blank, newtab) is closed, a tab that was already on a page is left where it was. Keyword launches skip the rules, so a rule for that site does not pull them back.

Privacy

Passport collects nothing and has no server. The only network calls go to Mozilla's account and Sync services, and only if you choose to sign in.

Develop

git clone https://github.com/hrolgar/passport-containers && cd passport-containers
npm install
npm test          # node --test
npm run lint      # web-ext lint
npm run build     # dist/*.zip
npm run run       # web-ext run, throwaway profile

To try it in your real profile: about:debugging, This Firefox, Load Temporary Add-on, pick src/manifest.json. It runs against your real containers, bookmarks and sync storage. Press Reload there after an edit. Temporary add-ons are gone when Firefox exits.

Release

Pushes to main run tests, lint and a build, nothing else. Every upload to addons.mozilla.org restarts the human review, so publishing is always explicit: bump version in src/manifest.json and package.json, push, then push a matching tag (git tag v0.6.0 && git push origin v0.6.0) or press "Run workflow" on the CI action. That submits to AMO's listed channel, tags if needed, and creates a GitHub release. AMO never takes a version number it has seen before, deleted ones included.

Support

Passport is free and stays free. If it saves you some clicks, you can buy me a coffee.

License

MIT