Private browsing was invented 14 years ago, making it possible for users to close a browser window and erase traces of their online activity from their computers. Since then, we’ve bundled in various levels of tracking protection and privacy control. While that’s great, some basic browser functionality pieces were missing from the Private Browsing Mode experience, namely giving you the option to save logins and passwords and giving you the power to choose which extensions you wanted enabled.
Private browsing tells your web browser not to save any of your history or cache, which keeps that information from being discovered or retrieved at a later date. To bust a myth, private browsing doesn’t make you completely invisible on the internet. For instance, your ISP can still log the sites you see.
The upside is that you can browse without worrying that the sites you’ve visited will show up in your browser history. The downside, up until now, is that you could not access any of your saved passwords, making browsing to sites that require a login more complex. With the latest Firefox you can give your browser permission save your passwords no matter what browsing mode you are in.
As more and more people use Private Browsing Mode to evade third-party trackers we wanted to make sure that Firefox users could have access to their favorite extensions as well. In the Add-ons manager you can choose which extensions are enabled and which ones aren’t.
You can also choose to have an extension work in Private Browsing Mode during installation.
Allowing you to have this level of control and customization with your extensions is important to us, which is why we’ve made it easy to find these new controls. We want you to have privacy and security just the way you want it.
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