Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

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In my opinion, profiles are useful for separating "who I am." Whether that's my personal life and my professional life, or if it's me or my spouse using the same computer.

Containers are useful for separating "who I am to my providers." As far as Facebook is concerned, I am a Facebook user, but I don't use Amazon or Google. But Amazon thinks I'm an Amazon user that doesn't use Facebook or Google. You can accomplish this with profiles, but in Chrome (last I checked) that meant multiple windows, rather than just sites being displayed in tabs that indicate the container in use. So for that purpose, I believe containers are more useful.

(I also think Firefox should step up their profile game, because when my spouse and I alternate using a computer we share, it's inconvenient for me to close all her Firefox windows so I can open my profile!)

You can definitely have two profiles open simultaneously - on MacOS, this is achieved with “open -n Firefox.app --args -P [profile name]”; on Windows, “firefox -no-remote -P [profile name]”. Admittedly, that should _really_ be exposed in the UI somehow, but at least it means you can wrap up the command in a handy desktop shortcut (e.g. one that says “my Firefox” and one that says “her Firefox”).

> Admittedly, that should _really_ be exposed in the UI somehow

Go to about:profiles, click the "Launch profile in new browser" button under the profile you want.

Yes, it's not obvious, and the UI has a lot to be desired if you want to explain the feature to some non-techie, but you no longer need to close the other Firefox instances in order to launch a different profile. I think this was added a couple releases ago.

Thank you. I didn't know FF had profiles to begin with.

Be aware that running multiple profiles at once can cause issues with updates. One instance can end up updating, which means that the other instance can no longer create new processes, because it is still on the old version, and it gets updated in place.

OK - I hadn't come across that. I actually have the shortcut on my desktop that prompts you to pick a profile if you don't have any windows open already. I'll have to see if I can tweak the shortcuts to open each one! Thanks!!

Yust a heads up: you can open different profiles simultaneously using the about:profiles page, see my other reply.

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