I thought it had had that for twenty years?
Yeah I don’t know why profiles itself are being mentioned as a new thing. What’s new is the more convenient interface for them
you don’t like about:profiles?
Show of Hands:
Who’s heard of “about:profiles”?
🦗🦗🦗
Been using it for years.
Been using multi account containers [1] for a couple weeks, complete with per-tab-SSL vpns.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
Wait till you hear about:about
For some reason I read that in a Canadian accent in my head.
“aboot aboot”
🤯
I use it so much I have the tab pinned
I’ve been using it for years, too. I have it on my bookmarks bar, but this will certainly be better, I’d think.
Next they’re gonna tell me they haven’t heard of about:processes either
about:config has all the fame…
I knew about the containers, which I’ve been using for a long time now. How is this different?
You can have a whole other instance of Firefox with different settings, extensions, themes, logins, bookmarks, history…
It’s really handy imo to have a school/work profile with relevant bookmarks, history, extensions and then have a separate personal profile for all my personal shizz. Not to mention not having my personal stuff pop up in my school/work profile to avoid embarrassing moments and not having work shit annoy me on my personal profile.
Ohhh ok yeah that makes sense. Now I’m thinking about if I want to use it… hmm
Profiles can have separate settings which is nice. I heavily use tab containers, but the site used for online grad school requires 3rd party cookies for any of the embedded content to work. So I have a separate school profile that has 3rd party cookies enabled.
I want to use it but I keep forgetting it exists. Something like this should just be accessible via button in the UI so no-one misses it
You can add -P to the shortcut to launch straight to the profile manager. Have to have no running instances when you do though.
I don’t find it or using the profile manager as convenient as what Chrome has
Just need it on mobile.
I tried it during covid when wfh started. I found it really annoying to switch between personal and work profiles. I prefer the chrome way of asking which profile each time I click the icon or having two separate icons.
Just add -P to Firefox launch flags once and then selected “prompt me everytime”. This also has been true for rlike 20 years.
Or just -P “profilename” to launch that profile directly from a shortcut.
You can have as many running simultaneously as you’d want.
it’s slightly different; before to have two profiles open at the same time you had to add no-remote and it was still quirky; now its much more streamlines and background links outside of firefox will open in whichever profile has focus.
I have two separate shortcuts, I just set it so that one shortcut opens one profile and the other the other profile.
Impressive that theyre finally adding a feature that ive already been using. Makes you wonder how they do that
A feature that has been present for 20 years, but never exposed in the interface. Truly magical.
Quite. It’s how I’ve been watching YouTube ad-free for ages.
I already use profiles in Firefox but this looks a much better interface for managing them.
uhhh, this has been a thing for a long time already. I don’t know whats new here. put about:profiles in your url bar for anyone uses a firefox based browser.
The UI was clearly not user friendly.
about:profiles always worked for me. And the profile manager. I don’t need a 3rd ui for switching profiles.
The new one is a much better experience. It works like profiles in chrome now. The old one is still there for you to use if you prefer.
It works like profiles in chrome now.
Is it gonna pop up obnoxiously every time you start the program?
Is it gonna demand that I create a new profile every time I sign in to Google?
Is it gonna pop up obnoxiously every time you start the program?
Your choice, there’s a checkbox to ask every time or not
Is it gonna demand that I create a new profile every time I sign in to Google?
I don’t recall anything like that, though I don’t recall that in Chrome either.
I think containers (that Firefox already has) are a much better way to handle this. Profiles, art least the way they are implemented on chrome, feels like a massive downgrade.
It depends on how much separation you need. If you want different bookmarks, history, or settings per, then I believe you need profiles to make that happen.
Ah, makes sense. I don’t mind sharing history and have never used bookmarks or customized any settings.
So… about:profiles is what then ‽‽
Uhm … is this perhaps for the android browser then?
The desktop browser has had this for a long long time, though in recent builds a bit hidden. I still use various profiles, very handy.
No, this is to make the desktop browser profiles work more like Chrome.
The screeshots shows functionality that the current profile/profile launch UI already has. Choose, create, ask on startup.
Right now it’s hidden behind a startup parameter. But honestly, I would prefer a UI between the current one and the new one. That screenshot looks like it would reduce usability through big spacing and suboptimal alignment. At least judging by my preferences.
I guess adding a picture is nice. But does it have to be that huge and prominent?
This only works on Windows. For Macs and maybe Linux, you have to run this command to bring up a different profile:
/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -p
As best I can tell, there’s no way to make this into a shortcut that you could just click on. This change will be good and allow me to launch them without invoking that command in terminal several times after rebooting my computer.
In Windows it’s the same. Though the parameter is
-P(uppercase) not-p. That’s why the comment said “it’s hidden behind a startup parameter”.As best I can tell, there’s no way to make this into a shortcut that you could just click on.
I dont know about Mac, but in Linux you can just manually make a
.desktopfile to have as a shortcut to callfirefox -P, or better a shortcut to a specific profile withfirefox -P <profile>. Though what I often do is keep a bookmark toabout:profilesand open a new window from there.I might try this next time I launch. Just launch one, go into profiles, and launch the second one.
On Mac:
If you want an icon you can double click on your desktop, you can put you command in a file with the extension “.command” and mark it as executable. Double clicking it will run the content as a shell script in Terminal.
If you want something that can be put into the Dock, use the Script Editor application that comes with macOS to create a new AppleScript script. Type
do shell script "<firefox command here>"then find Export in the menu. Instead of Script, choose export to Application and check Run Only. This will give you an application you can put in the Dock.If you want to use Shortcuts, you can use the Run Shell Script action in Shortcuts too.
Finally, if you want something that opens multiple firefoxes at once, chain multiple firefox invocations together on one line separated by an ampersand. There is an option you have to use (–new-instance I think?) to make Firefox actually start a complete new instance.
I made this into a shortcut on Mac OS Panther the year Firefox came out (2004). This has been possible on all operating systems for decades
The “Use the selected profile without asking at startup” checkbox in the dialog is not there on mac?
I hadn’t known that this was a method. My entire workflow has been changed.
You’ve always been able to navigate to
about:profilesas wellOn Windows, I had two shortcuts–one each for a profile. It became my workflow and annoyed me when I couldn’t do that on a Mac. I didn’t always want my work profile to open by mistake, check into systems, etc. when I only wanted the home one, for instance.
Why couldn’t you do that on a Mac? You can edit the shortcut path and add the flags and parameters there.
I was never able to figure a way to do this. I could link to the executable but not modify the shortcut to allow for flags.
Bro is still on Windows 7
Why would I use this when I have Firefox containers?
separate settings, separate addons, separate about prefs. also for when the PC is used by more than one person but there is only one user account
Ok this is handy ngl. I’ve forgotten about the shared family compute scenario
It’s the same as about:profiles
Just an easy way to separate people’s browsing histories, cookes, bookmarks, etc I guess. And you can have them sync independently as well. For if other people want to use the same computer
That makes sense. The bookmarks and settings kinda made everything fit better in my head, thanks!
It’s great having a separate profile for when you tell bbc iPlayer you have a tv licence.
But can’t containers do that? Maybe I’m missing something?
Multiple accounts on the same websites with different cookies for each one.
That’s what containers do.
I love containers, but it has a pretty frustrating and unfriendly ui. If something else allowed sorting and categorizing, I think that’d be an upgrade.
Fair, I just always felt containers were better than profiles, cause each tab is a profile now. The tooling does need improvement, I still get lost when trying to access some configs for it
One thing that I wonder is if I can convert my old
firefox -Pprofiles into this new kind of profiles, and have them all be synced by firefox with a single account instead of recreating them on all my devices. On the filesystem they seem to be the same, just not in the same place.Their blog implied you would need to create a separate sync account for each profile. It’d obviously be better if you could choose which profiles are linked to which account, in addition to local only.
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Ironically, in the article it’s pictured running on Windows, which now has a built-in mechanic for automatically screen shotting everything you do and keeping records.
Yay.
This should have been a feature 10 years ago
It was.
It wasn’t. It was a hidden feature.
But it was a feature
Yes, and also no. Usually, I’d call something a feature if non tech savvy users can use it easily. If it’s hidden behind the command line, most users probably can’t use it. So, to me and colloquially, I wouldn’t call it a feature. Although I get the argument for it.
You can type in the search bar of the browser about:profiles to access it
Is a hidden feature still a feature?
I’ve been using this daily for many years. It’s behind a CLI flag, is that hidden ?
I find multi account containers to be the best workflow ergonomics when it comes to separating logins and sessions. I think having the same bookmarks, theme, etc. is actually nice. But I’m sure many really enjoy profile swapping.
Yay, a 25 year old feature with a new UI design.
I’m using FF as my daily driver, but I feel my hatred for Mozilla soon reaches the level of my hatred for Google.
I do wonder (just in my head, there’s no hint to that in the public) if all that money Google pays to Mozilla somewhere has a no-competition clause which says FF must stay more shitty than Chrome.
I’m not consciously of one Innovation out of Mozilla that made FF a better browser, and a lot of interesting stuff has been canceled.
It’s still an OK browser, but it is like it was 15 years ago. While I watch colleagues using chrome reskins which have great tab management (amazing when you use Jira). Only now that we have LLMs people turn browsers into agents - why the fuck is there no cross - request scripting (go to google, search for this, click on 2nd result…). Yeah we have developer tools like puppeteer for that, but having - say python or js to do so would make people use it more frequently.
Browser history. Ah damn, a day ago I saw a page that explained how to do xx with yy while considering zz. How great some decent browse history would be. (And yes, FF, keep it all, but only when I’m at http://weirdkinkyporn.com/, please just store it for a few hours). A single keyword for history search IS NOT ENOUGH. I need to isolate things by adding a number of things, because if I knew the word I’m searching for, I’d just google it anyways.
Yeah, so much more things you could do (and the above ideas are just half - baked thoughts).
But Mozilla needa tha sweeet CEO payments. There’s no money for experimental stuff.
About a month ago, I ranted about that with a few friends, afterwards I rage-contributed to the Servo project.
I just wish Google would cut off that Mozilla money, I really believe that would improve competition.
That no-compete agreement is a product of my imagination, but things really feel like that.
Fuck Mozilla.
