1574834 - Private mode resets "restore previous session" tabs from normal mode

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[Filip Zakrzewski]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

Start Firefox
Set it to "Restore previous sessions" (Options -> General -> Startup -> [X] Restore previous sessions)
Open some tabs (Google, Gmail, Facebook, ...)
Add some pinned tabs too #not required to repro, but also part of the overall issue
Restart Firefox and make sure all tabs are restored as expected
Start Private mode window
Close normal mode window
Wait a 5s #just to make sure normal mode process is gone
Start normal mode window again
Close both normal and private windows
Wait a 5s #just to make sure normal and private mode processes are gone
Start Firefox in normal mode

Actual results:

Firefox opened a new tab instead of restoring previous session from the normal mode window

Expected results:

Firefox should have opened previous (normal mode) session's tabs

Comment 1

[Florencia Di Ciocco, NI to vbalducci]

Hi,
I've reproduced this issue on Ubuntu 18.04 on firefox Nightly 74.0a1 (2020-01-11) (64-bit).

My way of doing it was simpler:

Open FF, open some tabs, close FF.
Open Private mode and close it.
Open regular FF and check the option to restore the session. It's grayed out.

Regards, Flor.

Comment 2

[GjG]

The bug was opened 5 years ago and still not resolved? (in version 126). I was just about to report it after losing a session with multiple tabs open like this. Terrible.

Comment 3

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

(In reply to Filip Zakrzewski from comment #0)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0
Start Private mode window
Close normal mode window

At this point the user has closed the normal window (lets call it window-1) which had the restored tabs. It is available in the recently closed windows menu. The session is ongoing while the private window (or any other window) is open.

Start normal mode window again

And now they've opened a new normal window. Lets call it window-2

Close both normal and private windows

This ends the session. The current state is persisted and will be restored at next browser start up. window-1 is still recently closed. In these STR window-2 seems to have no tabs, so we'll not save this for restoring or reopening.

Start Firefox in normal mode

The private window is never saved for restoring. And the only open window from the previous session was new and had no tabs. So we effectively start a new session in this case.

So I understand the confusion, and this bug has been reported several times. But I'm not sure how to fix this. How are we to know that window-1 was what the user thought of as their "previous session" rather than window-2. The user explicitly closed window-1. And it should be there in the recently-closed menu. So AFAICT this is working as expected.

I think you are saying you expect the session to end when window-1 is closed even though the private window is open. And creating the new normal window (window-2) should effectively restore the previous "session", i.e. restore window-1?

Comment 4

[Filip Zakrzewski]

hi Sam! I think the expectation here is to ignore private window session exists and set window-1 from the normal session to re-open

Comment 5

[GjG]

(In reply to Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him) from comment #3)

Start normal mode window again

And now they've opened a new normal window. Lets call it window-2

There's a bug here. I open a new normal window (from a shortcut on the desktop or Ctrl-N), having ONLY a private window open, and since a private window doesn't save sessions, it shouldn't affect normal window sessions. Meanwhile, opening a new window at this point doesn't restore tabs from the previous session, but starts an empty window with a new, clean tab. And this will be remembered after closing both windows.

128.0.3 (64 bits)