[Tip] Disable Separate Taskbar Icon for Firefox Private Browsing Windows
In Mozilla Firefox 106 and later versions, regular and private browsing windows have separate Taskbar icons or buttons. This new feature is called Privacy Segmentation or Private Browsing Separation. If you don’t like separate Taskbar buttons for Firefox private browsing windows, this article will help you in disabling this new feature and restoring old behavior.
In older versions of Firefox, if a user opened private browsing session using Ctrl+Shift+P hotkey or by selecting New private window option from main Firefox menu, the private window and normal Firefox windows used to share the same Firefox program button in the Taskbar.
But in newer versions of Firefox, both normal and private Firefox windows use separate buttons in Taskbar. It has been done to allow users to pin separate icons for normal Firefox window as well as private Firefox window in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
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Recently an AskVG reader contacted us and asked about the same issue:
After version 106, private windows no longer show next to the normal Firefox window as before. Now it shows at the end of the list in the taskbar. For example, if I open normal FF window and the Notepad and then FF private windows, the Notepad would show between FF normal and FF private window. And I’d like to revert to the old taskbar icon for private window.
Fortunately, Mozilla team has provided a hidden secret preference/flag to deactivate and disable the new privacy window separation feature in Firefox. Once you modify this secret preference, Firefox will use a single combine button in Taskbar to show normal as well as private browsing windows just like previous versions.
If you also want to disable separate Taskbar buttons and restore classic behavior for Firefox private browsing windows, following steps will help you:
1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “Accept the Risk and Continue” button. It’ll open Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration page i.e. about:config page.
2. Now type separation in Search filter box and you’ll see following preference in the window:
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browser.privateWindowSeparation.enabled
3. Double-click on the preference browser.privateWindowSeparation.enabled and set its value to false. Alternatively, you can click on the Toggle icon given next to the preference name.
That’s it. Now try to open a private browsing window and it’ll use the same existing Taskbar button of regular Firefox window.
PS: In future, if you decide to re-enable new private browsing separation feature in Firefox, set the above mentioned preference to true again.
Also Check:
[Tip] Disable Dark Mode in Private Browsing Windows in Firefox
[Tip] Remove Tabs Search (Arrow Button) from Firefox Title Bar
[Tip] Disable or Remove “Firefox View” Tab Icon from Toolbar
Thanks, it worked, very happy now 🙂
Thank you very much! For the life of me, I cannot understand why it had to be moved? Not once in all my years have I ever heard someone say they needed to put some distance between their browser’s taskbar buttons (I mean never!). Perhaps a good article would be investigating why these programmers (which I can only *assume* are the youngest generation of programmers…) constantly make pointless changes such as this nowadays (clearly they’re confusing change with progress). Again, I appreciate the solution.