hello bookerj, during private browsing no cookies would be stored on disk - so they won't show up in the display cookies dialog as well. to my knowledge, this is the intended behaviour in firefox...

Thanks for quick response Phillipp. I may be missing some; it doesn't appear to work as you say. My privacy panel settings are "Use Custom Settings", "Always use Private Browsing", "Allow cookies from sites", "Third Party cookies: From Visited sites". And I populated Exceptions list - mostly BLOCKed ad servers, but some sites I "ALLOW FOR SESSION" because they require cookies. See attachd screen snip. I think you mean that my exceptions list is moot - Private Browsing rejects all cookies. But I read Privacy Panel Help as: Private Browsing does not make me invisible on the web; sites may still track my presence and preferences, but it scrubs all footprints at session end to protect my browsing tracks from later review by users on site. To test, I set my bank's site BLOCKd, try and fail to login. "The site says: Your cookies are disabled - enable cookies and try again." Now I set the site to "ALLOW for SESSION", make no other changes, and login works. I think the bank server placed 4 cookies on my system, but SHOW COOKIES says none are present, even while I remain logged in. Could it be that PRIVATE BROWSING is simply hiding the cookies until session end? Then where? I'm grateful for any insight you can offer. -Jim

You can open the Web Console (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer) and paste this code in the command line to see the cookies. This also works as a bookmark.

javascript:void(console.log(document.cookie.split('; ').join('\n')));

Thanks for the input, cor-el. Once I figured out where to find the console's command line and got past its SPAM warning, the cookie.split()/join() worked okay: lots of output, mostly javascript warnings and HTTP requests, at least one cookie. But next is puzzling:

I inadvertently pressed [CLEAR] and console obeyed, of course. So I reenter the command (a few times) but now get no response - just blank console msg pane. So I close the active fx tab, then open a new one with web console, log in, and re-interpret the split()/Join(). Now console only returns this command interpreter error msg: > undefined (attached screen snip).

So my question: can this js command split()/join() be interpreted only one time? Do I need to adjust something first? It appears the PRIVATE BROWSING feature's design "cloaks" any cookies I permit in - I presume to keep them from being seen, is that it? So can a webpage script place a cookie, then later in the same session retrieve or query it? Could a page just include a document.cookie.split()/join() command in its script?

Anyway, I am pleased to have your technique, and grateful. Thanks. I'll try it as a bookmark shortly.

Maybe simplify it a bit:

console.log(document.cookie.split('; ').join('\n'))

Or to display it as a long string:

document.cookie

Edit: I use the console docked into the tab. Maybe "Clear" works differently when it's undocked??

The version I posted above can be used as a bookmarklet if you copy the text to the location field of a new bookmark. That way you only have to open the Web Console.

Okay, seems clear. Thanks jscher. Now I can see the interpreter auto-completing the java tokens as I type. Reasonable guess about docking the console, but it turns out CLEAR behaves the same docked or un, as one would expect. Seems my problem was related to prefixing the document token with the javascript: director and/or the void() return value. Simpler syntax works fine. Thanks again.