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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

#21

Post by bluebarbet »

conaclos wrote: post #16
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…

Have you tried `firefox --no-remote --profile `? In my case, I am able to launch several Firefox instances with distinct profiles.

Yes, I tried that and everything else. Either it refuses to launch with `--new-instance` or (from memory, in the case of your command) subsequent `--new-tab`s may open in the wrong profile. Presumably due to the order in which the original instances were created. The point is that the system turns on these UIDs, which are not paths or even hashes of paths.

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

#23

Post by o11c »

conaclos wrote: post #16
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…

Have you tried `firefox --no-remote --profile `? In my case, I am able to launch several Firefox instances with distinct profiles.

Note that `--no-remote` breaks starting new browser windows from outside, which users normally want.

I'm starting to think that setting the `HOME` environment variable is the only way to really make things isolated - this still won't handle `~insertusernamehere` but basically everything else respects it.

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

#24

Post by ghostly_s »

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…

Tried containers when it was released but found it very inconvenient to manage. If I understand this solution doesn't even let you have two profiles open at once? That's even less useful imho.

edit: I use Simple Tab Groups which is far more featureful - "Send tab to [group/container/etc]" for example is table stakes.

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

#25

Post by Lammy »

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.…

> Firefox has had profiles for years. What the heck is new?

Even further back — Netscape had profiles! https://web.archive.org/web/20000816175642/http://help.netsc...

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

#26

Post by skeledrew »

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.…

For some reason neither my Dark Mode add-on nor the built in reader mode (which also makes pages dark as I prefer) work on that page. Very annoying; will skip reading that to preserve my eyes.

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

#27

Post by bluebarbet »

ghostly_s wrote: post #24
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…

Tried containers when it was released but found it very inconvenient to manage. If I understand this solution doesn't even let you have two profiles open at once? That's even less useful imho. edit: I use Simple Tab Groups which is far more featureful - "Send tab to [group/container/etc]" for example is table stakes.

Of course you can have them open at once, that's what's useful. I have four! And I can open subsequent windows in the right profile, no problem. But it required non-trivial scripting.

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

#28

Post by throwaway150 »

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-written. Even the comparison of tidying your tabs to setting boundaries seems meaningless. It's just the sort of empty parallels AI loves to make.

It's a short article but I really had to power through it because with every sentence I kept thinking, this is not written by a human. If it is AI-generated slop, that'd explain why some parts of it doesn't make any sense.

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

#29

Post by agumonkey »

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

there's an old '-P' flag that shows a small ui

see https://imgur.com/a/Tmt3oEL

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

#30

Post by gdulli »

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…

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.
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