I use Firefox profiles to manage tabs because I have many open, so I keep a few different profiles. I was waiting for the new profiles feature I saw announced, but I still don’t know how to use it.
You could always use profiles, its not really new. But it required you to run Firefox with commandline options. Whats new is just an integrated graphical user interface to select and manage profiles.
It should be described here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management?redirectslug=profile-management-redirect-1&redirectlocale=en-US (updated a week ago). For some reason, clicking the account icon does not have the “Profile” submenu for me. And I am on the newest Firefox. Do you have the menu?
While true we always had them, I believe It’s a different implementation, since profiles made the old way aren’t accessible in the new interface.
Do you have the menu?
Yes, on version 144.0.2 on Fedora
Hmm. I actually don’t know why I don’t get the “Profiles” menu, when clicking the “Account” icon as described in the link. Is it the icon that I can add by “Customize Toolbar”?
Profiles have been around for a very long time. They are collections of all browser data for a given user - pretty much all of the browser’s disk usage except for the executable itself. AFAIK the new switcher just makes using multiple profiles easier. Just keep in mind that profiles are completely isolated, and creating a new one is like a fresh Firefox install. You can copy profiles but the copies will not sync between each other
unless you synchronize them with a Firefox accountturns out you can’t have one Firefox account assigned both at the same time.BTW when creating a new profile (not a copy), I suggest https://ffprofile.com/ to opt out of telemetry etc. easily.
Never seen ffprofile before that’s useful. Wonder how up to date it is with all the new ml options.
Probably not, none of the [recent commits]https://github.com/allo-/ffprofile/commits/master/) mention AI.
Can you really sync between profiles with a Firefox account? According to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management?redirectslug=profile-management-redirect-1&redirectlocale=en-US
suggest this should not be possible.
I never tried it but I assumed there would be no such arbitrary limitation. Guess I’ll edit my comment, thanks!
Yeah, its surprising. But kinda makes sense if you think about it. If you have profiles and sync, why would you?
Maybe you want profiles with the same bookmarks but separate history and cookies? You can choose what to sync via a Mozilla account.
I haven’t tried this newly announced switcher but maybe it also gives you the choice, offline this time.
That’s where containers are for: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers
Go to
about:configand setbrowser.profiles.enabledto enabled, then restart Firefox.
Note: For some reason already existing profiles (via original Firefox profile manager) are not listed there.
