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Comment by mech422 | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget, you can still use multiple profiles. I have multiple shortcuts setup, each starting FF with a different profile. Within a profile, I use containers to further partition things.

edit: for instance, I have a 'banking' profile with containers for each bank, brokerage, etc. The profile is totally separate from my 'general browsing' profile, so nothing can be sniffed. And the containers allow me to partition off each service

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I use profiles and containers together in Firefox, which gives more flexibility than either of these features alone.

Firefox lacks a built-in profile switcher menu like the one in Chrome, but the FOSS browser extension called Profile Switcher for Firefox is a similar replacement:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/profile-switc...

You'll need to install the connector for the extension to work:

https://github.com/null-dev/firefox-profile-switcher-connect...

What benefit do you get from starting another Firefox instance with a different profile compared to simply using a different container in the same instance?

Different profiles can have different extensions, so if you don't fully trust some extension you can isolate it to a given profile.

Also different bookmarks and different histories.

The ability to configure browser and extension settings differently for different profiles, plus different history/cookie for each.

This is nice for experimenting with changes to umatrix settings without having results "pollute" my long-lived container storage.

Also nice as a relief valve for when I don't won't to deal with my locked-down default settings, and just want to open up a site with everything enabled in a temporary container that gets blown away when I'm done.

Very interesting... The one nice thing about containers is being able to move sites from one profile to another if necessary.

Can you do the same with profiles? If I come across a link in one profile, but one to open it in another, is there a way seamless way to do it?

other the copy/paste the url? I'm not aware of one..though, that's not very 'seamless' :-) The whole idea is that profiles are totally separate - separate process, config, etc.

I always wondered why there was no easier way to change profiles in firefox than about:profiles. I am not sure what your solution is though, would you mind going into details ? Thanks in advance

You can create a shortcut which will launch with the profile of choice: https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1171685

The problem is that this is the same solution as it was in 2005 and no average user is mucking about with specified shortcuts or command line flags. Chromium has demonstrated the most obvious GUI for this but for whatever reason the FF product team believes we should prefer about:profiles or this solution.

I launch my FF profiles from the terminal using aliases. But I guess some people would find that difficult (though it's not) even if they do happen to be a Linux user.

I just have a shortcut for launching with the -P (Profile) and -new-process options.

There is an easier way, if you are willing to install the Profile Switcher for Firefox extension and accompanying connector. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356472

Good idea, i opened a private window with all extensions disabled for banking and closed the normal window. Like your solution even more.

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