I almost exclusively use private tabs and had quite a few of them open at any time for things I was working on. But apparently since I’ve last updated the default behavior changed to close private tabs and the option to keep them open was removed.
Digging into it, I’ve found the bug report in the link. The last entry in the bug report is concerning:
It looks like this was discussed in FXIOS-8672, although I don’t have access to that JIRA to take a look at the discussion.
Of the three PRs that I see that reference FXIOS-8672, one of them mentions:
I’ve intentionally kept this PR as simple as possible so we can release it and then be sure there is no major blow back from users. If we need to roll back it should be very simple in the current state.
I’m not sure what would count as “major blow back” but there is at least some hope that this functionality can be restored.
I agree with @garnetred that this behaviour isn’t limited to force closing the app.
You could have two different website sessions logged in at the same time using regular and private tabs. This was much more convenient than having to open a different browser. I hope they plan to release container tabs soon.
Not sure why the OP would prefer private tabs though.
Edit: forgot OP asked about IOS, not desktop…
That is a fair point.
Firefox profiles is not well integrated or known.
On windows, in the run dialog (win+R) type
firefox.exe -p to open the profile wizard.
You can also make custom shortcuts but I don’t recall the exact command.
If you sign in with the same Firefox account on both profiles to sync bookmarks and stuff, the only thing different would be what ever you’re signed into.