At the moment, running different profiles simultaneously is not possible
That's the one feature I really want from Firefox profiles!
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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At the moment, running different profiles simultaneously is not possible
Bullocks. I run 2 or 3 profiles at the same time. For over 2 years now. Just easier now.
@MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone Me too. At least I used to have a separate profile for PDF viewing, which had its own plugins installed. It can be done by using commandline options to select what profile to use, like in --profile or -P (i forgot which of them I used actually). Just created a script for it (Bash script in Linux) and associated PDF files with it as if it was a separate program.
What they mean in the article is probably its not possible with the GUI only of Firefox. They totally ignored the commandline options.
Yeah but you have to do it with separate launch arguments.
Or always start with profilemanager. But indeed, also a launch argument.
Or open about:profiles (which you can put conveniently in your bookmark bar).
Hopefully it's not an actual regression in the latest version, because that'd be terrible.
Rookie numbers! 4 here.
At the moment, running different profiles simultaneously is not possible
Bullshit. I've been multiboxing Firefox for years.
You need to run firefox.exe -p to open profile manager and then create all the profiles you want. Then create shortcuts to each new profile. firefox.exe -p ProfileName
This allows you to run a personal profile, work profile and porn profile simultaneously without crossing streams.
Under Linux you can also start a throwaway profile by running firefox --Profile $(mktemp -d)
It already just works, just go to about:profiles and launch as another profile. There's also have container tabs, so no need for a separate profile when you only need isolation.
Would be nice if they just added a profile manager with a button though.
I just have about:profile as the first on my bookmark toolbar. You can also make a shortcut to firefox --ProfileManager in your OS.
That's unfortunate, I was hoping for a 'workspaces' like feature as in Opera. I run FF and Opera simultaneaously to segregate my tabs. It would be really nice if we could get something like that extended to profiles, so I could just run FF
Do you mean containers? At least it sounds like it.
The last time I looked at containers I think it was an add-on, but I don't think (and please correct me if I'm wrong), it filtered or made active the current viewable tabs.
In Opera there's an icon list on the left and depending on which one is selected those are the only tabs displayed, and/or made active. I'll take another look at FF containers.
Someone mentioned 'about:profiles' above, I think that may be closer to what I'm looking for, maybe that combined with containers can reduce my foot print to just Firefox, thanks for the suggestion
Multi-account containers are already all I need.
This is excellent news. This is one of the biggest features that I've wanted out of Firefox for years, and one of the reasons I've kept Chromium as a secondary browser all this time.
I do remember seeing a community-made GitHub project that added a profile switcher to Firefox, which looked pretty good, but it also required installing an executable somewhere on the system, which I'm not exactly keen on.
I think Zen Browser has a built-in profile switcher, but it also changes a bunch of core UI elements... I just want Firefox with a profile switcher, lol.
Anyone else get an obvious malware popup in this link? On iOS.
Yeah this website is shit
"in Nightly"
This doesn't mean a lot for people who don't know about Nightly, can't risk it, or don't want to.
That just means it's in active development and will come to the beta browser soon, and then to the stable version.
Cool. I've been thinking they should just make that available somewhere for quite a while now, since about:profiles was already pretty usable, it was just impossible to find for normal users. But that they're improving the user experience at the same time is quite welcome, too.
About bloody time. Containers are fine for on the fly use - for checking what pages look like logged out, or visiting a link that you don't want affecting algorithms etc. but for separating personal and work and whatever else, profiles are the way to go. It's actually already pretty easy to add 'about:profiles' to the toolbar but the more accessible they make it, the better.
I look forward to profiles also making it to the Android app 5 to 10 years from now.
How is it better than about:profile?
Because it's integrated into the GUI similar to how pretty much every other browser does it, of course .
Noone asks you to open terminal and edit config files in editor