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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

#91

Post by 037 »

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.

It could be a privacy risk, though, because by directly moving a URL (and all its parameters) to another profile, it might be easy to link them together on the server side. It’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s definitely important to be aware of, since one of the main uses of profiles is precisely isolation for privacy and security.

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

#92

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

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…

> But that will not work as expected if you have more than one profile (which is the whole point). At present the only workable solution is to fiddle with a GUI thru `about:profiles` (or `firefox --ProfileManager`) in order to create the profiles and give them all-important UIDs.

FWIW, that's only true if you care about it having those IDs and being exposed to the graphical interface. If you don't, then you can just run `firefox --profile $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/whatever` and it works. I use a small shell script™ wrapper to run firefox this way and it's quite nice. Also helpful: If you run firefox like that, you can just point it at a new empty directory and it'll populate it as a profile, so it's easy to make new ones too.

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

#93

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

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…

Some folks under https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45829275 seem to say that there's an about:config to force enable it, or you could wait for it to get rolled out to you.

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

#94

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

gaadd33 wrote: post #78
sfRattan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of addons that I want to use occasionally that require full data access. I generally do trust them... Seconded, except I don't trust most add-ons and don't want to have to trust them. I want an easy way to launch a disposable browser session in any browser, totally isolated, with add-ons chosen (and downloaded) at launch time, and then erased of with the rest of the session when its last open page…

I think Firefox focus does that on android, I'm sure there's a way to get the same result on a desktop with some flags and pointing to a config file (or a read only profile folder maybe?)

AFAIK Firefox Focus doesn't have extensions at all:( Although yes, it effectively has only private/incognito sessions that are erased when you close the app.

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

#95

Post by agumonkey »

ciupicri wrote: post #34
agumonkey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's an old '-P' flag that shows a small ui see https://imgur.com/a/Tmt3oEL

Does it still work?

yes. I just started using it last week to split work related browsing from personal stuff.

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

#96

Post by nine_k »

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.

Not even drag and drop to the window with a different profile?

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

#99

Post by carderne »

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…

Here it is for anyone else who struggled:

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

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

#100

Post by bluebarbet »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #92
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…

> But that will not work as expected if you have more than one profile (which is the whole point). At present the only workable solution is to fiddle with a GUI thru `about:profiles` (or `firefox --ProfileManager`) in order to create the profiles and give them all-important UIDs. FWIW, that's only true if you care about it having those IDs and being exposed to the graphical interface. If you don't, then you can just…

But that script won't work if you need to open subsequent new windows in particular profiles.

PS: probably. It's possible there was a fix. The GUI setup remains unscriptable.

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