(On Windows anyway, don’t know if different on Linux)

Just wanted to share that as a user of both Firefox and Chrome, it’s one thing that makes me hate switching to Firefox. I often need to use two different profiles and the way Firefox does it sucks.

With Chrome I’ve got two shortcuts (that Chrome creates by activating an option) pinned to my taskbar that look distinct from one another and the instances that I open are combined under their respective profile shortcuts.

With Firefox I need to manually create two shortcuts, assign two distinct icons to differentiate them, change some properties so they open the right profile, pin them and because they’re “regular shortcuts” instead of the default Firefox launcher shortcut, when I open the program I end up with a third Firefox icon in my taskbar (it does not open under the shortcut I used, it acts as if I clicked a shortcut on my desktop) where all instances get merged together no matter which profile they’re associated with.

  • taaz@biglemmowski.winEnglish
    29·
    9 months ago

    Did you try containers? Though truth be told I am not amazed by any of these solutions too.

  • CluelessLemmyng@lemmy.sdf.org
    15·
    9 months ago

    What’s the goal with the profiles? Is it to keep separate sessions or keep separate accounts with specific bookmarks?

    I use Firefox and there are 5 extensions I install every time and two of those are Containers and Tree Style Tab.

    • Cyborganism@lemmy.ca
      10·
      9 months ago

      I use profiles for using two different SSO accounts with company and customer site that both use the same SSO service.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        15·
        9 months ago

        Then use the Multi Accounts Containers extension, which achieves exactly that. I have work under the default container and my personal accounts in a “personal” container. We both use Google accounts, and it’s simple to separate them.

        I actually have several:

        1. Work
        2. Personal
        3. Banking
        4. Wife
        5. Kids
        6. Shopping
        7. Games

        I do this for a mixture of privacy (my SM can’t see my banking or shopping stuff) and convenience (can be logged into personal, work, wife, and kids email accounts simultaneously).

        No need for profiles, they’re just colors on a tab, and all synced with my single Mozilla account.

      • CluelessLemmyng@lemmy.sdf.org
        3·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, then you want to utilize the Multi Account Containers extension. And I would recommend the Tree Style Tab alongside it but I know sidebar tabs aren’t everyone’s thing.

        I’ve been using these two a lot. And I have to have not only multiple O365 profiles, but multiple AWS sessions as well. You can even set the containers up so that certain urls only open in specific containers.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksOP
      3·
      9 months ago

      Separate accounts with different bookmarks (both in browser and on websites used by both accounts).

      Pretty ridiculous that an extension would be necessary for something that seems like an obvious inclusion to add when adding the possibility to create profiles…

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      Yeah I guess having two separate installations could work but it’s at the same time it’s a very convoluted solution to an issue that seems extremely obvious to me…

      • pgp@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        9 months ago

        It may seem like that at first, but the obvious solution ends up being even more convoluted.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksOP
          3·
          9 months ago

          How?

          Go to the settings under your profile, add a ✔️ to confirm you want a profile specific shortcut, it’s now on your desktop and can be pinned to your start menu/taskbar.

  • MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world
    9·
    9 months ago

    I think this really comes to what exactly you want to separate. You say "I often need to use two different profiles". Okay, why do you need to use separate profiles though? Maybe separate profiles are not a great solution in the first place for your purpose?

    Firefox profiles are amazing because you can be sure that no data is shared between the two profiles (unless you sync them of course) - for whatever reason one might want that. But if you just need some session separation then containers would be a much better fit.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksOP
      6·
      9 months ago

      Two users using the same computer at home, so we’re not going to log-out/log-in every time one of us wants to watch a video on YouTube or to check their email, with Chrome we just click on our own Chrome shortcut or hover over our own shortcut to see our own windows that are already opened. Separate profiles is the exact solution to our situation.

      There’s no reason data separation can’t work with what I’m talking about, it’s just different shortcuts for the different profiles and the associated widows stacking under their respective shortcut, it is in fact much simpler than the current Firefox implementation with one shortcut and then you need to choose a profile or you need to go to about:profile to switch and all the instances are stacked under the same shortcut in the taskbar.

      • MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        Fair. For something like that containers don’t work, and indeed profiles are probably the way to go. I sure wouldn’t mind if about:profiles had a button to create new icon for that specific profile which then would also be in its own taskbar group, but I doubt I would want it as default for new profiles.

        At any rate, having multiple profiles per same install on same Windows user poses some issues. Like what profile are links in other applications supposed to open in?

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksOP
          1·
          9 months ago

          I think the few times that happens it’s the first profile that has priority, in our case it doesn’t really matter as it’s only game launchers under my name that do that anyway.

          We also have other computers just for our own stuff, it’s the one connected to the TV where it’s an issue.

          • MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world
            4·
            9 months ago

            Okay, since it doesn’t like it’s your main computer or anything, you might be interested to try taskbar profile grouping. Go to about:config and while there create a new boolean pref named taskbar.grouping.useprofile and set it to true. Doing that the two profiles should have their own group in taskbar. It’s a very crude feature though, since for example the right-click jump list items are not separate and you can’t set different icons for them (unless you do that via Windows somehow), but it sort of works.

  • MangoPenguinEnglish
    5·
    9 months ago

    I agree, they need to make it more like Chrome for usability

  • Concave1142@lemmy.world
    5·
    9 months ago

    If you have access to docker and want to play around, spin up a Kasm container (or VM) and have as many single use instances for the browser of your choice. I personally have a Chrome and Firefox workspace that I use for testing web apps we use at work.

  • cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    9 months ago

    On linux you can run firefox through their binary. If done correctly, you can use a separate firefox for that second profile of yours.

  • dwindling7373@feddit.it
    3·
    9 months ago

    I imagine Chrome prioritized this feature because it’s valuable for them to clearly distinguish different users (and because they can).

    Given the limited popularity of the feature Firefox sounds good enough. I used to use two distinct installation and had satisfying results for my use case.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      9 months ago

      But Firefox already has profiles, I’m just saying that they just need to go over step further and allow us to create “real” shortcuts for each profile instead of forcing us to use a roundabout way to achieve an unsatisfying result.