What an isolated Workspace keeps apart

Websites remember who you are with cookies and other data they store in your browser. Sval keeps that data in a store, and which store a tab uses depends on its Workspace.

Shared and isolated

Every Workspace starts out shared. All shared Workspaces use one store, so when you sign in to Fastmail in Home, Fastmail sees you as signed in from Work too.

An isolated Workspace has a store of its own. Every tab in it uses that store, and no tab outside it does. Sites in an isolated Workspace can’t see the sign-ins you made in your other Workspaces, and sites in your other Workspaces can’t see the ones you made in it. That’s how you can be signed in to two accounts on the same site at once, one in each Workspace.

Isolation belongs to the Workspace. A single tab can’t be isolated on its own, and a tab always uses the store of the Workspace it’s in.

Why tabs reload

A page that’s open can’t change stores while it runs. So when a tab moves between stores, Sval reloads it in the new one. That happens when you isolate a Workspace, when you stop isolating one, and when you move a tab into or out of an isolated Workspace. Sval asks before each of these.

Sval doesn’t copy sign-ins from one store to another. When you isolate a Workspace, it starts signed in nowhere. When you stop isolating one, the data kept only in its store is deleted, and its tabs use the shared store’s sign-ins.

Each device keeps its own

Your Workspaces sync, and so does whether each one is isolated. The store itself stays on the device. Sval never syncs cookies or sign-ins, so you sign in once in an isolated Workspace on each of your devices.

When you delete an isolated Workspace, each device deletes its store, with the sign-ins and site data in it, once the deletion reaches it.

Private windows

A private window already has its own store, apart from every Workspace. Isolation doesn’t change it.

Related pages

• Isolate a Workspace
• Move a tab to another Workspace
• How sync works