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Firefox's profiles implementation sucks (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Kecessa@sh.itjust.works to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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(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.

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[–] kaidelorenzo@lemmy.today 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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

[–] taaz@biglemmowski.win 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

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.