Did you try containers? Though truth be told I am not amazed by any of these solutions too.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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Containers are not the solution for everything.
Here is an example, I use the website aliexpress. I want to browse with multiple identifies, from various countries, different account and I also need to access with no cookies and no login, completely anonymous to defeat the value extraction AI aliexpress uses to show you higher margin sellers first.
With containers you can create one container to always open that website in it. But you can't choose which of all these context, you just get one default container per website. (or you have to manually manage them and it's easy to slip up and get tracked)
With multiple profile, you can name them and colour the firefox UI theme to represent which type of account this is. Anonymous/logged main/logged alt/ etc...
The problem is the profile switcher addon doesn't come as part of firefox base installation, you have to use about:profiles and it's terrible by comparison.
Profile switcher should be part of the base installation.
Using multiple containers for single sites isn’t that hard? Not sure if I’m missing something here, but open a new tab in another container then put in the same URL?
If you set "always open this site in this container" then it always go to that container. If you don't set that, now you have select container every time. It becomes very easy to login inthe wrong containers.
If combine that with profile switchers, you get the best of both worlds.
As people have said containers is amazing. But in the scenario where you really need 2 completely separate browsers and don't want to use different operating system accounts (I've done this in the past).This extension has worked well for me https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ It's not ideal that it's an extension but it does do its job
Profile switcher is amazing Combine with multiaccount container and container proxy, you can manage multi accounts on the same website, control multiple exit gateways VPNs for the same website and completely compartmentalize each type of activity from each other.
Combine that with separate password vaults in each profile and you can greatly tighten your security.
Like I have a banking only profile which has stripped yellow skin and it's the only profile that has access to the password manager with my finance related passwords.
Profile switcher should come out of the box with firefox because installing profile switcher addon and helper program is way too much work for normal people.
It does its* job.
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.
I use profiles for using two different SSO accounts with company and customer site that both use the same SSO service.
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:
- Work
- Personal
- Banking
- Wife
- Kids
- Shopping
- 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.
Link: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/
It's an official extension by Mozilla. And I can confirm that it's amazing, and if multiple website accounts are your use case, it's better than profiles.
Thanks! I was too lazy to link it.
The only use I have for profiles is to have separate sets of extensions, and I need that almost never. I basically just have a blank profile to check if a website issue is due to my extensions (or to run automated tests), and I almost never touch it.
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.
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...
My solution is to use Firefox dev edition for the second profile.
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...
It may seem like that at first, but the obvious solution ends up being even more convoluted.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I agree, they need to make it more like Chrome for usability
On linux you can run firefox through their binary. If done correctly, you can use a separate firefox for that second profile of yours.
On windows you can do that too.
Good for Linux users? I'm not switching OS for that.
@Kecessa
💯 For me, the Profile Switcher is the best solution because it opens any number of instances of Firefox with different profiles at the same time.
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firef…
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.
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.
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.
I dont usw miltiple profiles myself but i imagine linux would behave much better in terms of once u set it up. But settibg it up would be just as much of a pain.
Eh, it's just a couple shortcuts: firefox -P .
But I honestly don't get the point. If you want multiple users on a system, just make different OS logins. If you want different logins for different sites, just use Account Containers.
Why would I want to use multiple logins on a home computer when the only thing we need to separate is the web browser?
The same reason you’d use separate profiles in a web browser: to keep your data separated.
Ok, it doesn't answer why I would want to do that when the only thing we want to be separated is our web browser
It's not about data on the disk, it's about opening the browser and being connected to our own stuff, so we don't have to switch account for every website we both use every time we go on the internet.
The simple, logical solution to that? Two internet profiles that open separate instances of the same browser. One click, boom, there's your version of the internet, another click, boom, there's the other person's version of the internet. Profiles already exists with Firefox, they just need to make the experience better like Chrome does.
i quit using profiles ages ago. i use different 'installs'. each is for different purposes and they each have a different mix of addons and user scripts|styles.
i have firefox installed normally, plus i have firefox developer edition, waterfox, librewolf, and even a seamonkey (some 'portable', some 'installed'). any or all can be run at the same time as the others. profiles are separate and there's no conflicts.
when i need it, i extract a portable chromium (opera or vivaldi, usually) and then delete it when i'm done with it.
That sounds like a lot of effort, switching browsers all the time. What does that provide you that Firefox Account Containers doesn't?
I only really use profiles to run automated tests (I'm a dev), and even that's rare.
it's not 'all the time'. far from it. usually only one, sometimes two, windows. i don't go into the lesser-used ones very often at all. like i said, different purposes--some of which are infrequent but require different configurations.
the portable 'installs' can also be zipped-up, put on (and run from) flash, moved to or replicated on different systems, all easier than backing-up and restoring individual profiles.
Oh yeah? Well I set up a different partition for each browser, each with its own OS install, and each has its own local account.
Containers, or 2nd browser, like Waterfox.