Settings > Privacy and Security > Private Browsing
Two options you might be interested in there:
Add private browsing shortcut will let you make an app shortcut to open fennec in private browsing mode. This would be a home screen shortcut. It won't add this to the app drawer.
Open links in a private tab. Clicking on links from other apps will open in private tabs.
The open links in private tab works fine still. However what OP means, and I can confirm that, you were able to setup Fennec to always start in private mode when you open it, without making a specific shortcut for it.
I just checked in Ironfox and there it still works like that. I could however not find a specific setting that does this.
So this makes me think, OP, what you and I were using was maybe never intended to work as expected but potentially a bug that got fixed. You can still open links automatically in private mode and you can add the extra shortcut for when you manually start the browser.
Yes, that's exactly it, thank you!
I checked another device where I got Fennec installed and it still works just fine there since I don't have automatic updates enabled and it's still on 139.0.4. But by the looks of it it seems to be intentional and I think I vaguely remember either F-Droid or some other place even advertising Fennec with that feature.
I just installed Ironfox to check and I'm running into the same issue there. I'd also be fine with a browser that lets me enable closing all tabs and deleting all history and cache upon closing the browser, private mode was just an all in one solution for that.
Are those too specific demands for a browser for android? I thought these were very basic wishes a user might have...
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