It's annoying these get grouped in the taskbar unlike Chrome profiles. Surely the main use case is to have a "Firefox" and a "Firefox (Work)" pinned separately to the taskbar and have them act as two completely different environments?
Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
61–70 of 212 posts
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#62So… what's changing? Profiles have been there for decade(s), is it just an alternative UI for folks who were unable to run firefox -p, or is there anything more substantial?
Came here to ask the same question. Maybe the news is there's now an easy way to theme them?
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Maybe it hasn't been rolled out to me yet. Or it might be because I'm not logged into a Firefox profile? It is only availiable to those logged in?
No I don't use sync at all. I think it might just require `browser.profiles.enabled` to be set to true in about:config, at least until wider rollout.
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#64Does this read like AI slop to anyone else? That whole "Profiles don't/aren't just $THIS; they're also $THAT" construction is classic LLM output. Then you've got the weird confusing inconsistencies like calling profiles a new feature when they aren't and there's also the rule of 3 ("avatars, colours, naming", "set boundaries, protect your information and make the internet a little calmer"). It all feels machine-writt…
An idea we'll have to start getting used to is that people who read enough of the slop might begin to emulate it without necessarily meaning to. The homogeneity will be contagious.
I still don't quite understand where ChatGPT and its pals learned this. Sure, all these PR copywriters are notoriously bad at writing, but still, I don't think I often met all this crap in many texts before. I mean, if I did, I wouldn't be noticing it now as that ChatGPT style. So why does it write like that? Is it even how Anthropic models write as well (never used them)? Is it some OpenAI RL artifact, or is it something deeper, something about the language itself?
I cannot even always quite formulate, what irks me about its output so much. Except for that "it's not X, it's Y" pattern. For non-English it may be easier, because it really just cannot use idioms properly, it's super irritating. But I wouldn't say it doesn't know English. Yet it somehow always manages to write in uncannily bad style.
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#65So… what's changing? Profiles have been there for decade(s), is it just an alternative UI for folks who were unable to run firefox -p, or is there anything more substantial?
What a shocker right?
I guess everyday normal people do dot use a command prompt much less open a terminal to open a browser profile.
They like to click and icon and create/switch profile. Chrome, edge and many other browsers had this feature for ever. Not having ability to easily switch profiles is only reason I did not switch to Firefox full time even though I quite like the multi containers extension in Firefox for managing bazillion AWS accounts.
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#66Profiles 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…
Have you tried `firefox --no-remote --profile `? In my case, I am able to launch several Firefox instances with distinct profiles.
I do `open -n "/Applications/Firefox.app" --args -p myprofilename` and that does the trick on mac
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You could use the about:config preference browser.profiles.enabled in the meantime I suppose.
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#68I was waiting for this feature
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#69UX of profiles in Firefox is bad. See how Chrome does it.
Re: Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse
#70Been using profiles for some years now and they are great. I usually start with the default profile, then navigate to "about:profiles" to open all I need. Thanks to profiles, when my manjaro install broke, I migrated to NixOS and all my browsing sessions were ready to use the way I left them. Getting a dedicated, more integrated UI for managing profile will be great.
The one thing I'm missing is "incognito" profiles - e.g. spawn a temporary profile (without any identity attached) easily when I'm researching/navigating unusual sites and kill it once I'm done. Having multiple of these would be a great improvement over normal incognito windows (which share identities).