Pinned tabs and essentials appear in private mode

[damian-ds7]

Captchas

• I have read the instructions.
• I have searched existing issues and avoided creating duplicates.
• I am not filing an enhancement request.

What happened?

after a.18 update when I open private mode pinned tabs from all workspaces and essential tabs are visible. Also something that's maybe related to #2789 is that normally after unloading pinned and essential tabs don't have favicons loaded but in private mode they do.

Reproducible?

• I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.

Version

1.0.1-a.18

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

Linux

Relevant log output

No response

[dosubot]

The issue you're experiencing with pinned and essential tabs appearing in private mode after the 1.0.1-a.18 update is likely related to changes made in how these tabs are managed. The update introduced a separate container for essential tabs, which might be affecting their visibility in private mode ^[1][2]. Additionally, the handling of favicons for these tabs was enhanced, which could explain why favicons are loaded in private mode ^[3].

The visibility of essential tabs is managed by appending them to a specific container, zen-essentials-container, which ensures they remain visible even in private mode ^[1]. This behavior might be causing the issue you're seeing with tabs from all workspaces appearing in private mode.

Regarding the potential relation to issue #2789, I couldn't find specific details about that issue, but it might be worth investigating if it involves similar tab management or visibility concerns.

To continue talking to Dosu, mention @dosu.

[damian-ds7]

Is there a way to change this behavior temporarily in browser?

[dosubot]

Yes, you can temporarily change the behavior of pinned and essential tabs in private mode by adjusting certain preferences in the codebase. Specifically, you can modify the following preferences:

1. zen.workspaces.individual-pinned-tabs: This boolean preference controls whether pinned tabs are managed individually across workspaces. You can toggle this setting to see if it affects the visibility of pinned tabs in private mode.

2. zen.pinned-tab-manager.restore-pinned-tabs-to-pinned-url: This boolean preference determines whether pinned tabs should be restored to their pinned URLs. Adjusting this might influence how pinned tabs behave in private mode.

3. zen.pinned-tab-manager.close-shortcut-behavior: This string preference controls the behavior when a pinned tab is closed using a shortcut. You can experiment with different values like 'close', 'reset-unload-switch', etc., to see if it impacts the tab behavior in private mode ^[1][2].

These preferences can be adjusted without a full update, allowing you to test different configurations and see if they resolve the issue with pinned and essential tabs in private mode.

To continue talking to Dosu, mention @dosu.

[sannidhyaroy]

I'm also experiencing this after the recent update. Private browsing is unusable, cuz all the pinned tabs from every workspace opens up in private browsing, causing the system to lag. The tab bar ui also appears broken, potentially because it tries to accommodate every pinned tab.
Fortunately, there's a workaround, as I noticed, if I close the pinned tabs using the ✕ button of the tabs. That doesn't close the pinned tabs in the normal workspaces, but they don't appear in the Private Window, which should be the expected behavior in the first place.

EDIT: Don't remove the pinned tabs in Private Browsing Window. You don't wanna learn it the hard way 🙂

[oupadhyay]

I don't recommend deleting the pinned tabs in private as I believe it will delete your pinned tabs in the normal workspaces later. Don't ask me how I know (I am sad).

[sannidhyaroy]

I don't recommend deleting the pinned tabs in private as I believe it will delete your pinned tabs in the normal workspaces later. Don't ask me how I know (I am sad).

Learnt it the hard way. Since, I tested it with one tab and it didn't seem to remove it on the normal window, I went ahead and removed all of them. And I was pretty happy for some time as everything was going well, until in the normal window I needed to pin a tab, and I see only that tab pinned and other pinned tabs removed. 🙂

[MrPiggy105]

You should also ignore essentials and pinned tabs with popup windows (like for signing into Google accounts).

[shishkin]

If bots suggest halucinated workarounds to bug reports just for fun I wonder if bots are also who write these buggy features in Zen in the first place 🤔

[kristijanribaric]

Fixed for next release.