Stay logged in across multiple Safari tabs

Bloke · 2020-08-26 14:16:15

I’m sure I’m just being thick here. Running Safari 13.1.2 on Mojave. If I open a Txp site in a private browsing session for testing changes, and log in to the admin side, great. I can browse around. If, however, I right-click and open an admin link in a new private tab (so I can do a side-by-side comparison of content or copy/paste bits and pieces easily from one tab/theme to another), I’m kicked back to the login screen.

It’s not just Txp. I get the same in Dropbox and Trello and gmail etc. To save myself hassle when I have multiple email accounts, for example, I’ll log into a private browsing session to access a separate gmail account which I use for testing new author account notification requests etc. This means I don’t have to repeatedly sign out/switch from my main account. I quite often have the main gmail window open in one tab and then right-click/open in new tab particular messages so I can refer back to them more easily while I’m composing a new one in the main tab. I can’t do this in Safari at present.

Seems that each tab in Safari is its own silo and login cookies are not shared. This is in contrast to Chrome (and I believe Firefox) where tabs in the same window share login info, but tabs in other private browsing windows don’t share data with other windows. This, to me, makes perfect sense. All tabs in a single private session window are shared so the power of tabs is retained.

Is it just me? Or is this how Safari works? And is there any way to make Safari share login cookies across tabs in a single private window? I squizzed through all the settings and found nothing of note, checked the context menus and didn’t find anything. Tried random icons dotted around the browser frame and didn’t find anything. What am I missing?

Side note: I’ve had to switch away from Chrome for development on Mojave because, for reasons I’ve yet to ascertain, Chrome absolutely rapes my battery. If I open a couple of tabs and leave them open while I’m working on other tabs, I get a “Using Significant Energy” warning in the battery bar, then the fan comes on and ramps up faster and faster and faster while the battery meter tanks. Doesn’t matter what sites are open.

Independently of this (or maybe related?) every now and again, my Chrome window will flicker, then flash white, I’ll see a bit of the desktop background through it, and then the entire window stays white. No buttons, no tabs, no content, no red/green/yellow window management icons, nothing. The only thing I can do is Apple-Q, wait for the fan to slow and shut off after a couple of mins, then restart Chrome. This happens in regular and incognito sessions on the latest v85.0.4183.83.

From reports around the web, this flickering phenomenon is due to hardware acceleration (or not) or dynamic desktop backgrounds (or not) or vsync chrome flags (or not) or a whole bunch of other tenuous things. Some people say toggling the above settings on works, other say it works if they’re toggled off. So I’m gradually working my way through them one by one and seeing if any make it stable. But none of them seem to affect this crazy fan/battery usage. It’s almost as if opening two tabs means the first tab just starts eating memory or processor cycles until the MacBook panics and kicks the fan on.

Something’s going on and I dunno what it is. But in the meantime I’m testing Safari as a development browser and would like to be able to share content across tabs in both regular and private sessions in the same window.

Any clues? Thanks!

colak · 2020-08-26 14:43:23

Just tested in on my Mojave. It appears that I cannot even open a txp back-end link in a new tab without having to login again. I do not remember having this issue before, but I admittedly seldom use private browsing.

Bloke · 2020-08-26 14:47:33

colak wrote #325580:

Just tested in on my Mojave. It appears that I cannot even open a txp back-end link in a new tab without having to login again.

Thanks for testing. Yeah, that’s the behaviour I’m seeing. It seems odd to me that Safari would prevent multiple tabs from the same site being opened in a single private session. I can understand not sharing cookies between windows, but can’t understand not sharing them between tabs in a single window, especially when they offer two context menu options: Open in new Private Tab and Open in new Private Window. Both of which, ostensibly, do the same thing.

Maybe Safari’s always done this. Maybe it’s a Mojave thing, but I can’t say as I’ve not really used Safari in anger before – and rarely in Private Browsing mode. It’s only because I was testing out transferring my dev workflow to Safari that I stumbled across this and wondered if it was just me.

Last edited by Bloke (2020-08-26 14:49:11)

colak · 2020-08-26 15:00:37

Just to add that the behaviour is the same on Catalina.

gaekwad · 2020-08-26 15:22:59

Bloke wrote #325577:

If, however, I right-click and open an admin link in a new private tab (so I can do a side-by-side comparison of content or copy/paste bits and pieces easily from one tab/theme to another), I’m kicked back to the login screen.

[…]

Seems that each tab in Safari is its own silo and login cookies are not shared.

[…]

Is it just me? Or is this how Safari works?

[…]

Side note: I’ve had to switch away from Chrome for development on Mojave

support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/safari/ibrw1069/mac

When you use a Private Browsing window:
Browsing initiated in one tab is isolated from browsing initiated in another tab, so websites you visit can’t track your browsing across multiple sessions.

Not you. As designed. I got caught by that last year, took me a while to sort it out.

Counter suggestion – rather than ~~porn mode~~ private browsing, turn off the cache so it reloads things every time. For me on Mojave/Safari 13 it’s on the Network tab, toward the top right, a slashed…erm…dustbin (?) is togglable:

Also, ditch Chrome and try Chromium – same engine, less Google. I’ll dig out the repo link where I got mine from, works just fine.

See also: www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/developer/

Bloke · 2020-08-26 15:44:49

gaekwad wrote #325587:

Not you. As designed.

Thank you. Figured as much. I’ve just been spoiled by the behaviour of other browsers then. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t something else borked in my recent upgrade or I wasn’t missing anything obvious (or maybe there was an Extension that could bypass it).

Counter suggestion – rather than ~~porn mode~~ private browsing, turn off the cache

Nice thinking. I’ll try that instead.

Also, ditch Chrome and try Chromium

Also a good choice. Does it still have an inspector?

gaekwad · 2020-08-26 15:52:09

Bloke wrote #325592:

Does [Chromium] have an inspector?

Yep, same key bindings as Chrome (Cmd + Opt + I):

phiw13 · 2020-08-26 23:05:40

Personally I am always surprised that Firefox allows multiple tabs with the same login (in private browser mode). That does not make any sense at all.

Bloke · 2020-08-27 00:12:25

phiw13 wrote #325595:

Personally I am always surprised that Firefox allows multiple tabs with the same login (in private browser mode). That does not make any sense at all.

Guess my expectations aren’t as rigorous as yours then ;)

The way I see it, a private browsing session is just that. A way to switch to a window in which your data is only kept for that session. As soon as you quit the session (close the window) your session data and any cookies and download history and page history, etc is deleted and/or unavailable.

If I open a new tab in the same session window I don’t expect to have to log in again to a site for which I have already authenticated in that session. Or have my settings from the tab I just used be unavailable.

But if I choose to open a link in a different session (a completely new window) then I think it is perfectly reasonable to not have your data from any other sessions available.

In the Safari model, there is no difference between a New Tab and a New Window in their Private Browsing context menu, besides the fact that the former opens up alongside the existing tab. Thus the choice of which to use is largely moot, as they function identically.

In Chrome, Firefox, et al, I can choose if the link I want to follow will share the session data/keep me logged in (New Tab) or not (New Window) which, to me, is a handy distinction.

phiw13 · 2020-08-27 04:18:17

Guess my expectations aren’t as rigorous as yours then ;)

yes :-)

I do see a different behaviour in Firefox though – in a regular window, no ad & content blockers, just the Firefox privacy settings set to strict. Opening a link to a page on the same site resets the visit count (set in a cookie).

Try this: visit elpais.com (the site allows viewing 10 articles without registration). Click a link to an article to open in a new tab, repeat a second link, a second tab. At the top of each page you should see a yellow bar with a text telling how many free articles are left. In Safari, the count goes down for each subsequent tab, in Firefox it stays at nine (9).

Hmm, hold on, depending on your configuration, you might see a cookie overlay. That would maybe allow cookies across tabs. The following Stylus user-style will block/hide it it:

@-moz-document url-prefix("https://elpais.com") {
#didomi-host { display: none !important; }
.blockNavigation { display: none !important; }
body { overflow: auto !important; }
}

(at least it does here, I don’t think they bother checking for EU or not location on that one)

phiw13 · 2020-08-28 01:28:36

gaekwad wrote #325587:

Also, ditch Chrome and try Chromium – same engine, less Google. I’ll dig out the repo link where I got mine from, works just fine.

Just a FWIW (I intended to mention that earlier, i then slipped my mind). Chromium build do not auto-update nor do they have an update mechanism. You have to fetch them manually.

Download page where the above flagged issue is noted:

Chromium builds do not auto-update, and do not have symbols.

When I need to test something on Chromium type browsers, I use Opera ‘cuz it is the less “bad” port overall (level of ugliness, intrusivity,…). I tried MS Edge Mac port for a while but that is really poop in terms of UI.

gaekwad · 2020-08-28 08:56:05

phiw13 wrote #325636:

Chromium build do not auto-update nor do they have an update mechanism. You have to fetch them manually.

Good point. I’ve never been entirely happy with the way MacOS/Chrome updates, installing its own background ksfetch binary instead of using something like Sparkle or similar that checks on startup.

(That said, it’s been a while since I used Chrome in anger, so the ksfetch stuff might have changed or gone away.)

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2020-08-26 14:16:15