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2.1 Multiple Profiles

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Thorin-Oakenpants edited this page Sep 15, 2020 · 20 revisions

How to set up, maintain, rename, delete and run profiles.

🔸 Firefox [Installed] Method 1 [Profile Manager]

In order to maintain profiles, you will need to open Firefox with a switch to bring up the Profile Manager. Make sure Firefox is closed.

  • Windows: Press Windows Key + R, type firefox.exe -p into the Run dialog that appears, and press Enter.
  • Windows: Or create/edit a shortcut and append -p to the Target
    • eg: "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p
  • Mac: Open a Terminal window — press Command+Space, type Terminal, and press Enter to do it from Spotlight. Type /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -profilemanager into the Terminal and press Enter.
  • Linux: Open a terminal and run the firefox -profilemanager command.

This will bring up the profile manager, where you can create, rename, delete and launch profiles.

In this example, the profile test was created in the default \AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles directory. WARNING: If you choose your own folder location for the profile, select a new or empty folder. If you choose a folder that isn't empty and you later remove the profile and choose the "Delete Files" option, everything inside that folder will be deleted.

Here is a Mozilla Support page, and here is a How To Geek article with much of the same, but with lots of pictures.

🔸 Firefox [Installed] Method 2 [Manual]

In Windows, in your <username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox directory you will find a profiles.ini. With Firefox closed, copy a new default profile, or clone your existing one, and put them anywhere you like (e.g: on a secondary drive). Create as many as you like. Then edit the profiles.ini.

Here is an example

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=Default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/hcac5r43.default

[Profile1]
Name=test
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/e6xjz6ty.test
Default=1

[Profile2]
Name=Hardened
IsRelative=0
Path=D:\UserData\Firefox Profiles\hardened

[Profile3]
Name=Relaxed
IsRelative=0
Path=D:\UserData\Firefox Profiles\relaxed

🔸 Loading Profiles

Firefox only wants you to use a single profile at once. However, you can use concurrent profiles if you like. To do this, you’ll just need to launch Firefox with the -no-remote switch. You could do this from the Run dialog or terminal, or just modify an existing Firefox shortcut.

  • TIP:
    • -p -no-remote will bring up the profile manager
    • -no-remote -p "profile-name" will load a profile directly

You can read more about Concurrent Profiles in the next section.

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