Firefox is adding profiles to separate your browsing sessions

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.

took em long enough.

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.

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?
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.
- I have two separate shortcuts, I just set it so that one shortcut opens one profile and the other the other profile.

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.

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.

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.

I already use profiles in Firefox but this looks a much better interface for managing them.

This should have been a feature 10 years ago

It was.
- It wasn't. It was a hidden feature.

So...... about:profiles is what then ‽‽

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.
- The "Use the selected profile without asking at startup" checkbox in the dialog is not there on mac?
- 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
- 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.
- 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 .desktop file to have as a shortcut to call firefox -P, or better a shortcut to a specific profile with firefox -P <profile>. Though what I often do is keep a bookmark to about:profiles and open a new window from there.
- You've always been able to navigate to about:profiles as well
Bro is still on Windows 7

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.
- also different addons, and different configuration for addons etc
- Ah, makes sense. I don't mind sharing history and have never used bookmarks or customized any settings.
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?

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
It's great having a separate profile for when you tell bbc iPlayer you have a tv licence.
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
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.
Multiple accounts on the same websites with different cookies for each one.
- That's what containers do.

Oh good, the current profile management is a little bit clunky. Having the option to launch random profiles wherever and whenever would be nice.

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?

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.

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.

One thing that I wonder is if I can convert my old firefox -P profiles 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

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
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!!
- ooo I might look into this.
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.
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
Did you try to achieve this with containerized tabs?

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.

Finally! Profile management is easily the worst feature in firefox

Agreed, it is tiring to type about:profiles each time, and then it auto corrects it to about:profiling instead.
- What do profiles do that I can't do with multi account containers?

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! 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.

have 4 default profiles. on latest, 'Profile: default-release-3'

about:profiles

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.

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 -P and/or about: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 ;)

ITT: People who only use Windows and don't realize that FF works differently on other systems.

Reminds me of chrome. Not sure if I like that

this sounds completely useless

Vivaldi has it for years

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