Future versions of Firefox to disallow extensions in private browsing by default, Mozilla to offer a toggle for each extension in add-ons manager to let users themselves enable the extension to run in a private window.
Chrome, Opera and Microsoft Edge browsers block extensions from running in incognito mode, Opera and Chrome, however, offer a setting to allow extensions in PB by showing this warning: “Google Chrome cannot prevent extensions from recording your browser history. To disable this extension in incognito mode, unselect this option”.
Users may want to run ad blocking and anti-tracking extensions in Private browsing mode, in current Firefox version, other extensions including privacy-related also records or save data and this shouldn’t be allowed as that defeats incognito mode. Mozilla now decided to follow Chrome (bug number 1511636) to turn off extensions by default in Private browsing in Firefox and to let users opt-in run extension in private window.
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According to mockup, browser shows this warning under ‘Manage your extensions’ in add-ons manager: “Extensions are not allowed to run by default in Private windows. This means they won’t work while private browsing and they won’t have access to your online activities there. To allow an extension to run in Private Windows, select the extension card below and change your Setting”.
For each extension, ‘Allow’ and ‘Don’t allow’ options will be offered in add-ons manager, the latter is selected by default, here user need to select former to run extension in Private window.
At the time of writing this, the bug is not yet fixed and when landed, users can able to allow/disallow extensions to run in private browsing by changing extensions.allowPrivateBrowsingByDefault pref value to true/false, the default will be set to false.
The company in another bug confirmed Firefox 66 will get this change and is planning show a doorhanger warning in Private browsing to users to inform that add-ons are disabled, you can visit exensions manager and can enable each exension in PB if you want.
With this change, like in Chrome, users can take a decision and have control over add-ons running in incognito mode. What do you say about this development?.
UPDATE January 29, 2019: The change has been landed in Nightly and disabled by default. To test changes to extensions in Private browsing right away
1. Ensure you’re using latest Firefox Nightly
2. Visit about:config
2. Find and change extensions.allowPrivateBrowsingByDefault pref value to false.
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