This Sunday, March 3, we will be landing a patch on Nightly to pref on
the new extension opt-in for Private Browsing. This feature is
currently desktop only. To avoid much rehash, here’s part of the prior
intent email:
“The extensions API includes support for an "incognito" entry in the
extension manifest where an extension may opt-out of running in private
browsing windows. Chrome has since made that the default, and requires
an opt-in by the user to run an extension in private browsing. We're
playing a bit of followup on this, since we bypassed the feature during
the crazy ramp-up for webextensions.”
You may manually pref this feature on now (best to have Nightly March 1)
by flipping the extensions.allowPrivateBrowsingByDefault preference to
false, then restarting Firefox.
This feature has been worked on by the entire web extensions team as
well as a quite number of individuals on other teams. I know I’d forget
names, so I won’t mention any, I just want to express thanks to all
those involved.
Here’s some notes that may be useful. This email will be followed up
with a blog post by Mike Conca. More notes below the fold.
Best Regards,
Shane
---
Some notes on how the feature works:
* Currently enabled extensions will automatically get permission on
upgrade (or restart after pref flip). This is done to avoid breaking
any work flow or surprising users by disabling extensions they thought
would be running.
* New installs of extensions do not get the permission. A post
installation panel allows you to easily give permission, or you may do
so in about:addons.
* When using permanent private browsing, extensions automatically have
permission to run. Permission is not changeable in this mode and any UI
specific to this feature will not appear.
* You will see flags in about:addons to easily identify those extensions
that have permission.
* In about:addons, entering the details of an extension will allow you
to change the permission.
* Extensions must restart when the permission is changed (this happens
automatically).
Extension Developer Notes:
* You may opt-out of any private browsing access by using "incognito:
not_allowed" in your extension manifest.
* "incognito: split" is not supported at this time.
* Developers may use the extension.isAllowedIncognitoAccess API [1] to
determine whether they have been granted permission. There is no API to
programmatically request this permission, the user must take action to
grant permission.
* In general, when permission has not been granted, your extension
should continue to work as-is unless your extension explicitly uses
features that require private browsing access. E.g. using
windows.create to open a new private browsing window.
* Some APIs that do not leak data from private windows do not require
the permission and may still affect private windows. browserSettings
[2] is a good example, where an extension may make changes to the
general behavior of Firefox without gaining access to private contexts.
Known Caveats:
* Bug 1526299: Some proxy extensions that use the proxy.settings API
will require permission to use the API even in normal windows. Other
proxy APIs will work as expected. We are working to address this and
will be reaching out to authors.
[1]
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/extension/isAllowedIncognitoAccess
[2]
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/browserSettings
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