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by luuurker 1032 days ago
Different bookmarks, extensions, settings, themes, and ability to sync all those to other machines.

We just have to look at what profiles and containers do to understand that while useful, containers can't replace profiles.

1 comments

I've seen this pop up a few times in this post. What's the use case for different extensions etc.?
Personal vs work profiles, for example.

My work profile has uBlock Origin with stricter rules which would break some sites/tools I use for work. I also redirect Twitter to Nitter, use a different password manager, etc.

For bookmarks, it's more a question of not wanting to have personal stuff together with work stuff. Then there's some settings that works on one profile but would cause issues (or annoyances) on the other. I also have a different theme for each profile, which stops me from doing personal stuff on sites with my work login (eg: searching on Google).

I also have a profile that is just for the shittiest sites I sometimes find online. I'll have extensions to block the crap, archive pages, etc, which would slow down browsing or break most sites I use.

On Chromium, I had one browser and 3 profiles. Then I decided to move to Firefox and since using profiles (especially switching/opening them, at least on Mac) is a pain, I use 3 different browsers (Firefox, Firefox Dev/Beta, Waterfox) as they all have their own profiles.

Could I live with only one profile? Yes, but that would force me to compromise. Containers alone? I tried to use them, but stopped after searching for stuff on Google and YouTube on the container I had my work Google account logged in. Profiles + Containers are the best of both worlds in one plane.

Gothya, thanks, I understand now.

> but stopped after searching for stuff on Google and YouTube on the container I had my work Google account logged in

Thought I'd mention though, that this is one of the areas I find containers a life-saver. Google's handling of multiple accounts is so badly broken, that I only ever log into a single account on a single container. Easy to keep work and personal Google separate then.