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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

#111

Post by 1718627440 »

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…

> The manual says you can do:

>>`firefox --profile Start with profile at `

>But that will not work as expected if you have more than one profile (which is the whole point).

What won't work? Is that specific to Windows? This just works fine on my Linux box.

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

#112

Post by hmstx »

small_scombrus wrote: post #74
throwaway150 wrote: post #28

Does 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…

> $THING isn't just $THIS, it's also $THAT! Is pure marketing speak, which is also what I find a lot of LLM generated text sounds like

Someone in a past thread here mentioned how they enjoyed the help of LLMs to generate all their PR marketing nonsense blurbs, because they looked just as good as the real thing. It might have been 2-3 years ago but I still joke about this with coworkers when the conversations shift to "AI".

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

#114

Post by 1718627440 »

lynndotpy wrote: post #82

Wanted this for years, and was one of the blockers that made Firefox impossible to really use. It looks like they're copying Chromium's UI (which is good, since it was superior to Firefox's about:profiles, for reasons others have mentioned). But neither this post, nor the splash screen which links to this, nor any of the menu options, actually say how to use "profiles". I can't find it in an internet search either, i…

What do you mean? Firefox has had profiles for decades. What is wrong with the Profile Manager?

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

#115

Post by 1718627440 »

attendant3446 wrote: post #13
sorcercode wrote: post #2

for the most part I've been using Firefox containers and loving that life of getting the same benefits without having to create separate profiles. but it's nice to see this finally get into Firefox because there are still a lot of folks who also want to maintain things like browser bookmarks, passwords etc in a separate profile. that's the only conceivable useful difference over Containers (which IMHO is slightly bet…

Profiles were in Firefox for a long time now. It looks like they finally have made a proper UI for it.

What's wrong with the existing ProfileManager?

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

#116

Post by wooger »

pcchristie wrote: post #61

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?

Curious, I've been running 2 profiles at once for a while on MacOS and they have separate icons / app management. It's a Windows thing.

A way you might get around this (if acceptable) is to run one profile from a beta or developer version of Firefox which has a separate app path & icon and may result in the behaviour you want.

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

#117

Post by worble »

For anyone as confused as I was, even if you're part of the rollout it will NOT migrate your old profiles. So this is nice and all, but completely useless to me until I can spend the time recreating my profiles on the new interface.

Seriously, what the hell Mozilla?

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

#118

Post by 1718627440 »

radley wrote: post #31
mrb wrote: post #15

What an extremely confusing blog post! I don't understand why it seemingly presents profiles as a new feature? Firefox has had profiles for years. What the heck is new? I had to click the other link https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management to understand that this is all about simple UI improvements to make it easier to work with existing profiles. The blog post is more than confusing, it is misleading.…

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.

No, you use it in the ProfileManager, which is a GUI that pops up on start.

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

#119

Post by Sharlin »

worble wrote: post #117

For anyone as confused as I was, even if you're part of the rollout it will NOT migrate your old profiles. So this is nice and all, but completely useless to me until I can spend the time recreating my profiles on the new interface. Seriously, what the hell Mozilla?

I presume they counted on the fact that almost nobody actually used the old (extremely obscure) profile system.

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

#120

Post by 1718627440 »

Scipio_Afri wrote: post #89

Would really be great to move windows or tab groups between different profiles; Edge offers this. Sometimes you don't realize what profile you're in and you start doing stuff in your personal profile that doesn't fit there. With firefox right now there is no way to select and move any tabs, tab groups or windows to the profile that is best suited for those links.

Does Edge do any more then open the same URL in another profile? In that case you can do this in Firefox by drag-and-dropping the URL.
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