1251490 - Closed private tabs show up in private Recent Tabs

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

STR:
1) Open a new private tab
2) Open a new private tab
3) Go to apple.com
4) Close the current tab (apple.com)
5) Go to the recent tabs home panel on the other opened private tab

Expected: apple.com does not appear in recent tabs
Actual: apple.com appears in recent tabs screen

"Recent tabs" appears to be modal – if you're in private browsing, you get a different set of private tabs than if you're in non-private browsing.

Comment 1

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

I'd say this is working as intended?

Certainly Desktop allows you to restore individual private tabs as long as the corresponding window is still open, and so do we.
Unlike open private tabs, we don't even send closed private tabs to the OS for safekeeping against OOM kills [1] and once the last private tab in a session is closed, we discard all other closed private tabs [2].

[1] https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6be5c7d30d2def62a762ac187252eba626b23a92/mobile/android/components/SessionStore.js#1060
[2] https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/6be5c7d30d2def62a762ac187252eba626b23a92/mobile/android/components/SessionStore.js#417

Comment 2

[Michael Comella (:mcomella) [NI reported issues only: ex-Mozilla]]

(In reply to Jan Henning [:JanH] from comment #1)
> I'd say this is working as intended?
> 
> Certainly Desktop allows you to restore individual private tabs as long as
> the corresponding window is still open, and so do we.

fwiw, I think it's more intuitive that your private session is still around when you keep open the private window on desktop than when you keep open a private tab on mobile (given that there is no UX concept of a window) – I filed a bug because the existing behavior surprised me.