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by account-5 976 days ago
What's so bad about typing in: about:profiles, into the address bar and selecting the profile you want to use? Or even creating a shortcut with the: -p, option to select one n starting Firefox.

Genuinely, what else are chrome/edge offering that is a deal breaker for you?

5 comments

> what else are chrome/edge offering

Having a simple UI that you can just click and launch other profiles, really.

This is available in the: about:profiles, page. But not directly from the UI. I tend to use, like others here have suggested, desktop shortcuts that open profiles directly.
> Genuinely, what else are chrome/edge offering that is a deal breaker for you?

Unless you fiddle around with using different themes for each profile, or install kludgy extensions, there's nothing indicating which profile a window is currently using.

I ended up modifying userChrome.css to display the profile after the URL.
This is true but I actually don't mind this at all.
You might not mind, but it's a papercut for a regular user wanting to use profiles.

The thing is that it's a also problem that can easily be resolved with some small UI tweaks. Everything we need for first class handling of profiles in Firefox already exists, save a more intuitive UI.

How does one launch a profile from the about:profiles page? ;)

It's a concept that is first class supported and easy to use in all othe browsers. There is just a ton of usability issues across the board, even with the third party addon.

I suppose it's just what you're used to. Once you're at about:profiles you're presented with a list of profiles to open and options to create new ones. Fairly simple to use, though from other comments not as obvious as other browsers.
> What's so bad about typing in

From any browser window and any context, I can use CMD+Shift+M and either open a new window in a different profile, or switch to the first available window for that profile. The browser then clearly indicates which profile I am in and has some UI elements for it as well.

So it's just like any other core browser feature: having it being integrated into the experience directly, and being able to use it from anywhere, with a shortcut or clear UI element, is a much better experience than having to navigate to a settings page or use a bespoke application shortcut.

If having to open a bookmark always required opening a bookmark webpage, instead of the bookmark list or the url bar integrations, then that would be a much worse experience and certainly a reason to prefer one browser over another.

You know what most people do not even know this exists. Even if it exists why would they prefer this instead of just clicking user icon and switching their profile as in chrome or edge.

Most people like simple and boring UI which is straight forward.