Why BoxBox?
You have a work Google account and a personal one. Two GitHub identities. A client's dashboard, and your own. Normally that
means signing out and in again, juggling browser profiles, or opening a private window and losing it all when you close it.
BoxBox gives every tab its own box. Put one tab in your Work box and another in your Personal box, and the same site
shows you two different logins side by side. Closing one never signs you out of the other.
- Works with any website. No site-specific setup, nothing for the site to support.
- Your normal browsing is untouched. Tabs that aren't in a box behave exactly as before.
- Private by design. No accounts, no telemetry, nothing is sent anywhere. Your boxes live in your browser profile.
- Free and open source.
Supported browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Helium.
How it feels
Two accounts. One site.
Open the same site in two boxes and use both at once. Each box has its own name, colour and icon, so you always know where you
are: the toolbar icon is your current box, and a calm coloured border and name tag sit on the page.
Choose before the page loads
Prefer to decide each time? Set a site to Ask and BoxBox shows a picker before anything loads, so the site never sees
the wrong account. Or have it open your normal browser, or remember the last box you used. You can set this for everything,
or per site.
Sites, not just domains
BoxBox thinks in services. youtube.com and accounts.google.com are both Google, so moving between them never switches
your box. Popular services come grouped out of the box, and you can merge, split or create your own.
Made to keep things apart
- Its own proxy per box. Send one account through a different network or country.
- Delete a box, wipe its data. Cookies, storage and caches go with it.
- Nothing leaves your device. No sign-up, no analytics, no servers.
Install
BoxBox is not on the browser stores yet. Until it is, build it (below) and load it in your browser:
| Browser | How to load it |
|---|
| Chrome | Open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode, click Load unpacked, choose the dist/chrome-mv3 folder. |
| Firefox | Open about:debugging, choose This Firefox → Load Temporary Add-on…, select dist/firefox/manifest.json. |
| Helium | Start it with --load-extension=dist/chrome-mv2 --disable-features=ExtensionManifestV2Unsupported,ExtensionManifestV2Disabled. |
Note for Chrome users: tabs inside a box show Chrome's "BoxBox started debugging this browser" bar. That is Chrome's
price for isolating accounts. If you close the bar, the tab is blocked instead of silently falling back to your normal
session, and the popup offers a Restore isolation button.
Build it yourself
What you need
Just Node.js 18 or newer (or Bun). BoxBox has no other build requirements.
Build
git clone [email protected]:oxcl/boxbox.git
cd boxbox
npm ci # install dependencies
npm run build # build the extension for all browsers
With Bun, use bun install and bun run build instead.
The result lands in dist/:
| Folder | For |
|---|
dist/chrome-mv3 | Chrome |
dist/firefox | Firefox |
dist/chrome-mv2 | Helium |
Then load it as described in Install.
Optional: the Nix development environment
If you use Nix (with flakes) and direnv, direnv allow gives you the whole
toolchain at once: Node, plus the exact browsers and drivers the tests and launchers below use, with nothing installed
globally. Then prefix commands with direnv exec ., for example direnv exec . npm run build.
Try it in a throwaway browser
One command builds BoxBox and opens a browser with a brand-new temporary profile that contains only BoxBox. Close the window
and the profile disappears. The browser comes with the Nix environment; without Nix, point BOX_CHROME, BOX_FIREFOX or BOX_HELIUM at your
browser's executable first, for example BOX_CHROME=/usr/bin/google-chrome npm run launch:chrome.
npm run launch:chrome
npm run launch:firefox
npm run launch:helium
# optionally open a page straight away
node scripts/launch.mjs chrome https://www.saucedemo.com/
Package for the stores
(cd dist/chrome-mv3 && zip -r ../../boxbox-chrome-mv3.zip .)
(cd dist/firefox && zip -r ../../boxbox-firefox.zip .)
The store listing images in store/out/ are generated with node scripts/store-assets.mjs
(run the build first). See store/README.md.
The website
The project site lives in website/ (plain HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript; no framework). It reuses the extension's own box
component, logos and service catalog, so it always matches the product.
npm run build:website # -> website-dist/
npm run test:website # loads it in a real browser: errors, links, interactions, phone layout, load speed
Pushing a change under website/ to main publishes it to GitHub Pages (the website branch) through
.github/workflows/deploy-website.yml. The store links on the site are set in website/site.config.json.
Run the tests
npm test # unit tests, then the full suite on Firefox, Chrome and Helium
npm run test:unit # just the quick unit tests
npm run test:chrome # one browser (also: test:firefox, test:helium)
The end-to-end tests drive real browsers against a local fixture server, so they need no internet connection. The unit tests
run anywhere; the browser tests are easiest inside the Nix environment, which supplies the browsers and drivers.
npm run smoke additionally checks a few real websites as a sanity test.
FAQ
Is this the same as browser profiles or containers?
It's the same idea with less friction: one profile, one window, any mix of boxes tab by tab. On Firefox each box shows up
as a coloured container; on Chrome as a coloured tab group.
Does it work in private/incognito windows?
BoxBox leaves private windows alone.
Will it slow my browser down?
Tabs outside a box are not touched. The interface is lightweight and only animates while something is moving.
What does BoxBox know about me?
Nothing leaves your machine. To show a service's logo in Settings, it remembers the icon a page you visit has already
loaded, stored locally. Logos for popular services are bundled with the extension.
Learn more
- DESIGN.md — how BoxBox works under the hood.
- REPORT.md — what works, what doesn't, and the test evidence.
prototype/ — the standalone design prototype the interface grew from.
Contributing
Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first for anything large, and run
npm test before sending a change.
License
BoxBox is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0-only).
Credits
Service logos come from simple-icons (CC0), plus a few hand-made marks. They are used only to
identify a service; the brands belong to their owners.
