Firefox is adding profiles to separate your browsing sessions
https://www.theverge.com/news/795998/mozilla-firefox-browser-profiles-separate-tabsOpen linkView original on reddthat.com480
Comments139https://www.theverge.com/news/795998/mozilla-firefox-browser-profiles-separate-tabsOpen linkView original on reddthat.com
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 them all the time, they're great. I learned about it from another random Lemmy comment
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.
Just need it on mobile.
I don't find it or using the profile manager as convenient as what Chrome has
I think they are just making a ui to manage it natively.
firefox -p was also an UI. Not as fancy as this one.
Also
about:profilesif it’s already runningI 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.
Feels super strange to read this. They had profiles for what, decades now? It just required a simple command line flag.
I mean, this is better, but... Yeah.
So...... about:profiles is what then ‽‽
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.
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?
Your choice, there's a checkbox to ask every time or not
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.
also different addons, and different configuration for addons etc
You can use containers all you want, just don't create another profile and you're golden.
This is what I do now, just trying to figure out why ff keeps spending time on profiles. Do they have any advantages over containers?
For highly technical users containers are going to do everything we need.
For non technical users who need separation, profiles are a standard known framework.
My non technical spouse prefers profile to separate work and personal. She uses different themes for each profile so it is very obvious which is which.
Also one of the extensions she likes interferes with a work site she is required to use. She has that extension installed in the personal profile but not work profile.
because it's useful for people who are not you
Different set of cookies, different set of preferences, bookmarks, history, etc. If you need to completely separate two instances, for example one for work and one for everything else, you can only do it with profiles
containers are for general browsing; profiles are for the whole browser
profiles allow you to have different addons installed, different configurations between addons in different profiles, different browser settings (eg a SOCKS proxy for work profile, or a different default search engine, default fonts, etc… or for technical users you can have a profile with experimental settings turned on)
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.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles?redirectslug=profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles&redirectlocale=en-US#w_start-the-profile-manager-when-firefox-is-closed
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".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
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.
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?
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
Multiple accounts on the same websites with different cookies for each one.
That's what containers do.
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 ?
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.
i guess you’d need to expose both options: the ability to sync some profiles to some accounts and others to another… for example, i probably wouldn’t want my personal profile to sync to my work devices but id want my work profiles to sync between each other and be accessible from some of my home devices
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.
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.
profiles also allow different addons and addon configurations, default fonts, browser config, etc… it’s kinda like having a whole other user account or a whole other copy of the browser, rather than just cookie and storage isolation
Understood, which is why for my workflow, I prefer MAC. Still a good feature.
totally; and i think that’s very fair for the large majority of use-cases… most people don’t need different browser settings: they just need different local storage
took em long enough.
I wish there was a feature like this on YouTube. I'd love a profile for watching educational videos, a profile for feeding me cool videos when I'm high, and a profile for when my kids want to watch stuff. I'm tired of vibing and listening to music videos only to get hit with a language learning podcast or Disney songs.
It's insane that they have an incognito mode that still serves up ads even though I have premium.
You can create different accounts under different email addresses.
Once you're logged in, you can switch between accounts from the dropdown menu.
I've done this in the past to separate French YouTube recs from English ones.
I did this as well but the other accounts get ads because the premium only applies to my first account. Terrible user experience and Google go hand in hand
In my anecdotal experience on my tv, the algorithm bleeds through accounts as well. Like a video that is more related to the content on one account is recommended on the other.
Youtube > Profile picture > Settings > Add or manage your channel(s) > create a channel
You basically get a new "profile" with your own subs, history, profile picture, and comments and premium/channel subscriptions apply to all of them
Holy crap that's exactly what I was looking for, thank you!!
no problem! i use it for my regular account, one for gaming, and one for dumb memes and tv clips so they don't get mixed up in recs :)
ooo I might look into this.
fyi; if you have youtube tv, only the main google account will work on that. you'd need a family account for multiple profiles on youtube tv.
They do have categories and I've tried to put different channels in different categories, but the thing is just so hard to use I gave up.
It's quite surprising how bad Google can be at UX.
It really is wild how a company can be so massive yet unable to do basic UI. I got a notification that someone replied to a YouTube comment I made so I clicked the notification and it opened up YouTube's landing page. I tried to find notifications and couldn't so instead I tried to find a page that has my comment history.
I had to look it up and apparently you can't even find it on YouTube, you have to go to a separate website, my activity.google.com.
Did you try to achieve this with containerized tabs?
I agree, I would love seperate "recommendation profiles" so like if I am in the mood for music, swap to music, if I want education, I can swap to that, feeling lets play? swap to gaming, horror could be creepypasta or horror games.
All under the same parent account so the premium status could apply while google would still be able to leech data off the main profile, the only difference is the curated content given is based off the profile.
edit: HOLY CRAP APPARENTLY THIS EXISTS ALREADY; you just need to make a sub channel under your parent account and the benefits share. I didn't realize recommendations were isolated with that.
I had no idea until I read Katy's comment, it's a game changer
tried tab groups, waste of time. trying to save my pinned tabs from disappearing. have to avoid closing single tab windows last. opens on the single tab and pins are lost. keep about 20 pinned in one window.
pins are attached to the specific window. if you close the windows one by one it trashes them. use the quit function in the menu on the right, that it does not trash the windows, each of them will reopen next timealong with the pins
You can usually find recently closed windows in history.
It is a great feature and is the main reason I like Floorp (Firefox fork). But the UX does not look good, I think the way Floorp does is better:
https://docs.floorp.app/docs/features/how-to-use-workspaces/
That does not looks like the same feature at all.
Oh good, the current profile management is a little bit clunky. Having the option to launch random profiles wherever and whenever would be nice.
Zen has "workspaces", which I don't get at all. Profiles seems like too much, containers works fine for me.
Crazy all the useless nonsense Mozilla has room for, since they helped kill RSS by dropping browser UI support for it for "simplification". It was the same rationale for removing live bookmarks and Shift+Enter to add .net to an address and Ctrl+Shift+Enter for .org.
You can assign containers to workspaces so that you can use work stuff one workspace, gaming stuff in one and so on.
Finally! Profile management is easily the worst feature in firefox
What do profiles do that I can't do with multi account containers?
I can let my kids play on my computer without them screwing up my personal browser history or getting into any of my accounts without having to teach them how to use yet another extension.
Vivaldi has a great example of profile management where I can literally create a desktop shortcut for each person that uses my computer, complete with their name, and it's their own separate internet profile.
Yes, I'm aware I could solve this problem by using multiple user profiles on my computer, but the overhead and the amount of management would also be a massive headache. It is just far easier to do this.
Fair, I mostly use my PC alone, so there's no need for separate profiles. Having multi-account containers is a godsend for me. It isolates session data between tabs allowing me to have as many browser sessions as I need in a single browser window.
Oh, I do the same thing, I use the same extension that you do, it just doesn't fit my use case for multiple profile management.
Finally! That was my biggest gripe when I switched from chrome but I ended up just getting rid of all my profiles, time to set up my old workflows again
Until it gets a proper Guest mode like Chrome (which is basically a private window without the shame of using one), the only thing they did is add a cute little interface to an ancient feature.
I this a reskin of about:profiles?
have 4 default profiles. on latest, 'Profile: default-release-3'
about:profiles
This features great if you habe two people who use a device. I have it on the steamdeck in my lounge and its nice for people to be able to open Firefox and have all their accounts saved and their extensions
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.
Reminds me of chrome. Not sure if I like that
Finally
Part of Chrome since >7 years?
It was part of Firefox before Chrome was even a thing.
Many people aren't aware of
firefox -Pand/orabout:profiles.. but it's one of the oldest features in firefox.I am.
It's annoying not just having a dedicated button like, for example, chrome has to manage profiles.
Don't use chrome. Google is an evil company now.
Never said I am using Chrome ;)
I've said that phrase many times in the past. I don't anymore and I don't let my friends either :)
ITT: People who only use Windows and don't realize that FF works differently on other systems.
Vivaldi has it for years
this sounds completely useless
Right yes, for when buying a ring for my wife.
Yes they've had that for ages it's called incognito mode or whatever the equivalent name for it is on Firefox. But it definitely has that mode already.
No, this is completely different. Incognito mode deletes all browsing data (locally) once the window closes.
This allows you to say, be logged into Facebook on one profile, logged into Google on a different profile, and logged into your daily browsing in a third profile. Or you can have multiple logged in YouTube sessions in case you're a content creator, you can have a profile for each of your channels.
This way the cookies for each aren't intermixed, and it would make it (slightly) harder to correlate browsing habits from embedded cookies or logged in sessions, or just to keep tabs and browsing history separate.
local storage isolation is the less interesting part, because that’s achieved much more cleanly with containers… profiles allow a kinda separate instance of your browser with different browser settings, addons, addon configuration, bookmarks, etc