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Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#41

Post by Brybry »

bluebarbet wrote: post #11

Profiles are great. I've used them for years. Much better than containers, which separate your data sort-of-but-not-quite. A profile folder has everything . You can copy it, back it up, plug it into a completely new Firefox installation later. That portability is a killer feature, but scriptability needs to be improved. The manual says you can do: >`firefox --profile Start with profile at ` But that will not work as…

In Windows 10 I have shortcuts pinned to my taskbar that are just

> ...firefox.exe" -P "profilename"

and then `taskbar.grouping.useprofile true` so only windows from the same profile are grouped together and some custom recolored Firefox icons for those pinned shortcuts and custom per-profile userChrome.css styling (#TabsToolbar background-color) for easy visual differentiation of a window's profile.

For Windows 10, no scripting is needed. Just the initial GUI profile setup.

> ...firefox.exe" -P "profilename" "https://www.example.com"

from terminal works exactly as expected regardless of how many profile instances are currently running or their state.

You can even have multiple versions of Firefox installed and point them at different profiles. I have some profiles on ESR and some on Standard.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#42

Post by xenophonf »

Firefox profiles suck. Their UX is so bad. Containers are better but still have their issues. I use Containerise plus Cookie AutoDelete plus Temporary Containers to give me what is effectively per-tab private browsing. The major downside is that I have to copy containers.json (which enumerates all of the dedicated containers I have defined, e.g., for Facebook), my Containerise rules (which automatically puts certain web sites into specific containers), and my Cookie AutoDelete config (which says which cookies to delete and when) among browsers manually. I wish more things supported Firefox's sync feature. I ended up adding them to my dotfiles, so it isn't too painful, but it definitely isn't grandparent friendly.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#43

Post by Yizahi »

New feature blablabla... Hey, Mozilla - how about fixing the multiyear old bug, which has like several dozen tickets in bugzilla alone, about randomly losing all open tabs? What good are profiles to me, if one of most important of the secondary features of a browser is fundamentally broken and unreliable? I'm so pissed at Mozilla for their attitude (nothing new really, after the Ugly Bar update and those comments on reddit). If there was a real third browser on Windows I would have jumped ship, despite running FF since beta, both on PC and mobile. Just last month FF managed to kill all my open tabs a third time this year, and that's after no error, completely normal PC shutdown and boot next day. (ps: I know about scrounger)

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#44

Post by fa3556 »

jmakov wrote: post #22

The most useful feature with the worst UX. You have to type about:profiles and then create a new profile. But imagin you now want to move old profiles to a new computer and FF happens to run in a Flatpack. Yeah, much fun

You can (now?) create profiles from the account icon in the toolbar [1] and at least on my firefox install, you can also do it from the hamburger menu.

I use firefox via flatpak and had no issues so far accessing profile data (in one of the folders in ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/ - I keep a regular archive of the entire folder as backup).

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#45

Post by celsoazevedo »

Finally. I know that profiles have been supported for a long time, but about:profiles wasn't that user friendly and on macOS, profiles could also mess your dock icon, wouldn't open in the foreground, etc. It wasn't a good experience.

I think the new profiles will cause some confusion (at least initially) because these profiles are not listed on the old about:profiles page and the old profiles are not listed on the new UI.

Still, a good improvement for me. I no longer need to use the dev/nightly channels or 3rd party browsers based on FF just to have different bookmarks/settings/extensions. I'll need a way to add old profiles to the new UI though.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#46

Post by mvx64 »

jmakov wrote: post #22

The most useful feature with the worst UX. You have to type about:profiles and then create a new profile. But imagin you now want to move old profiles to a new computer and FF happens to run in a Flatpack. Yeah, much fun

I found out about profiles recently and I just couldn't believe that that's the standard way to access them. Also, it's not obvious which profile you are currently on, so there are some silly but necessary workarounds like having a dummy bookmark with the profile name on each or something like that, while it could just be a string next to the address bar.

It works really well though. Does exactly what I would expect and hope from such a feature.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#47

Post by dare944 »

Brybry wrote: post #41
bluebarbet wrote: post #11

Profiles are great. I've used them for years. Much better than containers, which separate your data sort-of-but-not-quite. A profile folder has everything . You can copy it, back it up, plug it into a completely new Firefox installation later. That portability is a killer feature, but scriptability needs to be improved. The manual says you can do: >`firefox --profile Start with profile at ` But that will not work as…

In Windows 10 I have shortcuts pinned to my taskbar that are just > ...firefox.exe" -P "profilename" and then `taskbar.grouping.useprofile true` so only windows from the same profile are grouped together and some custom recolored Firefox icons for those pinned shortcuts and custom per-profile userChrome.css styling (#TabsToolbar background-color) for easy visual differentiation of a window's profile. For Windows 10,…

I do this on Linux (Mint) and it works as expected.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#48

Post by celsoazevedo »

bluebarbet wrote: post #11

Profiles are great. I've used them for years. Much better than containers, which separate your data sort-of-but-not-quite. A profile folder has everything . You can copy it, back it up, plug it into a completely new Firefox installation later. That portability is a killer feature, but scriptability needs to be improved. The manual says you can do: >`firefox --profile Start with profile at ` But that will not work as…

> A profile folder has everything. You can copy it, back it up, plug it into a completely new Firefox installation later.

These new profiles seem to be slightly different from the old ones?

[edit: ignore most of the stuff below, see replies]

The new UI doesn't show your other regular profiles and when you create a new profile via the new UI, it also doesn't create a separate profile folder (it's part of your active profile). They're like sub profiles... probably to allow everything to be synced via a Firefox account?

We can still move the profile folder. The difference is that what's created with the new UI is part of that folder (the old about:profiles page is still there and old style profiles are still supported).

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#49

Post by dare944 »

fa3556 wrote: post #44
jmakov wrote: post #22

The most useful feature with the worst UX. You have to type about:profiles and then create a new profile. But imagin you now want to move old profiles to a new computer and FF happens to run in a Flatpack. Yeah, much fun

You can (now?) create profiles from the account icon in the toolbar [1] and at least on my firefox install, you can also do it from the hamburger menu. I use firefox via flatpak and had no issues so far accessing profile data (in one of the folders in ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/ - I keep a regular archive of the entire folder as backup). [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management

> Not all users will see the new Profiles menu in the toolbar, since this feature is being rolled out gradually

I don't see it yet, but hopefully soon.

Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

#50

Post by dare944 »

cassepipe wrote: post #37
radley wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's buried in about:config , it's not a feature, it's just a dev tool. (FWIW, I read that config settings may reset during updates, so at best it's just a temporary patch.) It's like saying you have a responsive website, but only if I edit the layout in the DOM.

Nit: It's not a parameter in about:config , it's been available for a while under about:profiles , no tweak needed

And now they're rolling out a new UI for it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management
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