1852737 - Firefox provides no equivalent to -new-window to open a url in a new private window

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, enhancement, P3)

Description

[jlp]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/117.0

Steps to reproduce:

In windows 10. I created a shortcut as such: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -private-window -url https://blablbabla

Actual results:

A new private window opens, but the URL is not loaded. If i have another private window already avalable, the url is loded in that window, never in the new window.

Expected results:

The URL listed in the command should have opened in the new window.

Comment 1

[jlp]

Note: if a firefox window is already opened, the URL will open as a new tab in the already existing firefox, whether it is private or not !

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Win32' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

(In reply to jlp from comment #1)

Note: if a firefox window is already opened, the URL will open as a new tab in the already existing firefox, whether it is private or not !

That's expected behavior. To open something in a private window, the command you need is

firefox.exe -private-window https://example.com

-url is for normal windows, while -private-window replaces it for private windows. In retrospect, this was perhaps not the best choice of semantics, but I'm afraid we're stuck with it now. The command you give should open a new private window, then open the URL in a non-private window; if it actually opens the URL in a private window, that's a bug (and may specifically be bug 1069263).

There is a command-line argument -new-window that will open a URL in a new normal window, but there doesn't seem to be any equivalent for new private windows. We should probably have one! I've adjusted the bug title accordingly.

Forwarding to Firefox :: General per the moz.build notation for browser/components/BrowserContentHandler.sys.mjs.

Comment 4

[Edgar Chen [:edgar]]

Attachment: Bug 1852737 - Use index to track activation target item; r?smaug,masayuki

Comment 5

[Phabricator Automation]

Comment on attachment 9357160 [details]
Bug 1852737 - Use index to track activation target item; r?smaug,masayuki

Revision D190348 was moved to bug 1856737. Setting attachment 9357160 [details] to obsolete.