24 ms·

Using extra Firefox profiles to make my life better

382 points by ingve 3y ago

mikae1 3y ago
If only Mozilla gave us the ability to choose what extensions should be enabled in what containers[1] I'd be a happy camper. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- rjzzleep 3y ago
  Fantastic idea, besides the UI needed it should be manageable to implement.
  - lopis 3y ago
    The UI is already partially there. You can choose which extensions are enabled in private Windows. It's a matter of extending that to containers.
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Yeah, and also I’d like it to ask me what container to open for a website sometimes, out of remembered ones. E.g. I have a website I use in just two containers (out of 15), and I like it to ask each time I open a new instance, so I won’t have to choose out of all my instances, just those two.
- toenail 3y ago
  What's your use case for that? Just wondering.
  - g0ran 3y ago
    For example, testing website functionality without an ad blocker.
  - ydant 3y ago
    Honey / Rakuten are very useful extensions, but I don't want them having access to every site I visit. In Chrome I use profiles and set up those extensions on my "shopping" profile only. In Firefox I use containers, but can't isolate these extensions the same way
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  You can do it with OS-level user accounts.
  - chupasaurus 3y ago
    You can't with containers, they're running on top of a current profile.
- fturst 3y ago
  Why not use about:profiles?
  - mikae1 3y ago
    Because I can't run different profiles in the same window. Also, the profiles don't share bookmarks.
ggm 3y ago
I use chrome profiles to get some structural separation between work, personal and inbetween. One has 1password and two have bitwarden, I can install different chrome extensions and maintain different chrome logged in sync states. I didn't find Firefox tabgroups did it enough for me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cosmojg 3y ago
  You should try Sidebery! It replaced Chrome's tabgroups for me and made the switch to Firefox much easier.
  - pantulis 3y ago
    If only Sideberry synced its state across computers... it's a great extension and I prefer it to other tree tab extensions.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Well no, the Firefox equivalent to Chrome profiles isn't tab groups, it's Firefox profiles, or possibly containers ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37953149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37953149 ). Though I'll agree that Chrome's UI is better.
  - ggm 3y ago
    I tried the containerised tab groups and they were OK but some of the menu logic defeated me. Having multiple Gmail identities proved almost impossible to "automate" suggesting the url/cookie mapping and storage wasn't able to discriminate different Gmail bindings. It kept selecting one tab group for the two accounts by default. I would try multiple profiles if the UI was better.
pastage 3y ago
I started this approach recently, I also change the theme of those Firefox profiles so I remember to close all windows. It is satisfying to keep things separate, and also quite useful to launch somethings as limited apps in a desktop environment. There are lots of things that could be done better, maybe crowd sourced Android/iOS style permissions per website.
sundarurfriend 3y ago
Firefox profiles are so underrated and (seemingly) underused. I create shortcuts for every profile, with the command to launch being `firefox --no-remote -P profilenamehere`. After that, I barely ever see the profile management dialogue, I just use each profile like it's a different browser. It's convenient to isolate work and personal browsing, convenient to try out different extensions (eg. I have Treestyletabs in one and Sidebery in another, just to evaluate both and see for myself), and the memory usage of running two Firefox profiles is much less than if I ran Firefox and a Chromium browser instead.
- mjfisher 3y ago
  That's a useful tip. I need access to several Microsoft live/AD/teams accounts, and they just don't work well in the same browser session. I've been using chrome profiles to separate these because the Firefox ones were a little clunky; for some reason it never occurred to me to create shortcuts per profile. Thanks!
  - remedan 3y ago
    Have you tried the Multi-Account Containers? It sounds like they might work even better for your use case. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
    - happymellon 3y ago
      Yeah, I used to have the same issue with AWS because they kept your account in your session. Having containers for these things is much better than multiple profiles. But for other things, profiles are far superior.
      - starfallg 3y ago
        As you mentioned this, there is now a Firefox add-on that automatically creates the containers from the AWS SSO landing page as you click into your various accounts. It removes the need to create them manually with the Multi Account Containers add-on. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/aws-sso-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/aws-sso-conta...
petesergeant 3y ago
I have found this hard to make work well on a Mac, with the end-state that I use Firefox Developer Edition for work, and regular Firefox for personal + Choosy to make sure the right links end up in the right browser. Could certainly work better, but is sufficient
- happymellon 3y ago
  Requires an install, but this makes it easy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
Raed667 3y ago
The only time I have had friction with profiles, is with some Google SSO as I use an unofficial extension called Google Container and sometimes the redirect just doesn't work. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...
thyrsus 3y ago
I use multiple profiles on my desktop; too bad it's not available on Android.
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  Why no browser has profiles on Android? It is true for chrome Firefox and all chrome derivatives.
parasti 3y ago
Wish more was said about how this makes the author's life better. Seems to me that most websites would break in small ways without JS, which would be really annoying to deal with.
- dangus 3y ago
  I’m not really even sure what Private Browsing isn’t enough for the author’s use case. It does pretty much everything they need like revolving around cookies and local data. I guess they just want to disable JavaScript, because that proves you’re a smart computer nerd, or something. Disabling JavaScript is like the computer version of fasting.
  - d-z-m 3y ago
    An important caveat of private mode in firefox is that you can't use service workers, so any app depending on those would break. > Disabling JavaScript is like the computer version of fasting. And enabling it is like deep frying all your food ;^).
lefixx 3y ago
I use them for multiuser and multi-purpose usecases. And it combines nicely with "Progressive Web Apps" so I can have, for example, a youtube app that has all my youtube specific extensions.
sakisv 3y ago
For a moment there I hoped that this was about using some kind of new interface to manage profiles but unfortunately not. While it's been ages since I last used Chrome I remember that it was so easy to switch between different profiles with a couple of clicks. Firefox on the other hand really doesn't want you to use them: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... We just have to hope that at some point in the future they'll revamp it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bjarneh 3y ago
> accepts and gives back all of those cookies, and so on, and then it throws cookies and everything away when I close it. Is this really better than just keeping them? Then he has to use some type of plugin to accept those cookies every time he visits the same sites? Otherwise that js-enabled browser sounds just as inconvenient as his js-disabled browser he uses as his default.
- d-z-m 3y ago
  > Is this really better than just keeping them? Depends what your priorities are. If you're more concerned about convenience, then keeping them is almost certainly better. If you're concerned about privacy, throwing away persistent identifiers like cookies when you close the browser is just good practice. I personally like knowing that no cookies/residue from my previous browsing session are carried over to a new one.
Condition1952 3y ago
on the meantime, sudden disappearance of ctrl+tab support for cycling through tabs on Firefox 118.0.2 (64-bit) and macOS is making my browsing experience miserable. I've tried googling for an answer, hopelessly. I have activated the option in preferences to no avail.
- tuyiown 3y ago
  It works on my macOS install, so I would investigate if any keyboard shortcuts have been tempered on the system preferences. A way to check that if to try to set the tab cycling on another shortcut on firefox. If it works you can be quite confident that something else is at play. The fact that you have very few results in your issue research is also a strong indicator that the problem might be specific to your setup.
  - Condition1952 3y ago
    yeah. That was it. ctrl+tab was set to cycle through app windows system wide. I had been grumbling for almost half a year. I've set it to ctrl+alt+tab. I'm looking forward to discover the unexpected incompatibilities. I had set ctrl+tab to "move focus to the next window" as cmd+tab shows applications. It was cycling through tabs anyway on Safari and Chromium Thanks for the heads up.
    - tuyiown 3y ago
      If that helps, i've set app windows cycling to ⌘+<key above tab>, which is ⌘+@ on my azerty keyboard. I don't think it's a commonly used shortcut on qwerty either.
- sergimansilla 3y ago
  This works for me, I use it a lot, same environment. Check that your keyboard shortcuts haven’t been assigned to something else.
INTPenis 3y ago
Firefox profiles are great, not denying that. And disabling JS is very important, I've been using noscript for many, many years. Can't even remember when I started. But having two profiles to switch between JS and non-JS seems like a massive hassle to me. I just hit shift+t in noscript and it temporarily removes restrictions on a tab. Noscript mainly protects you from those unknown tabs being opened by malware, that you don't expect. But usually on a huge website like theregister or etsy you can disable that while you do your business. One feature I'd love to see in noscript though is globally disabling noscript by domain. And that is mainly due to AWS using randomized cloudfront subdomains to include assets. I don't want to whitelist *.cloudfront because anybody can use that to host malware.
- foresto 3y ago
  Check out uMatrix and uBlock Origin.
  - INTPenis 3y ago
    I have uBlock origin installed already, but do they do what I want? Maybe you misunderstood me. I want to go into the aws console and based on the primary domain (in the url bar) I want to allow all JS for that tab automatically, if that pre-condition is met. Noscript right now can only whitelist specific domains. So if the primary domain is amazonaws.com and it includes assets from 123.cloudfront.com then there is no way to temporarily whitelist 123.cloudfront.com automatically when I enter amazonaws.com. It has to be done manually.
    - d-z-m 3y ago
      > I want to go into the aws console and based on the primary domain (in the url bar) I want to allow all JS for that tab automatically, if that pre-condition is met. uBlock can do exactly this.
    - foresto 3y ago
      > Maybe you misunderstood me. I don't think I did. uMatrix makes this easy to configure with a couple of clicks. uBlock Origin can probably do it as well, but not as easily; it might require text-based configuration. As I said, check them out. (And please note that uBlock Origin is not the same as uBlock. Avoid the latter.)
deleted 3y ago
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jbverschoor 3y ago
I have a number instances + one with Chrome/macOS for each client/entity and certain activities. Each browser has a different set of extensions, and adblock rules (I can't go on hackernews, except with my social media browser). My main development browser has more dev extensions for example. It also makes tab-management easier, as I can just close the "work browser". All of them have a separate instance, icon, and color. It helps me focus, as I don't accidentally see time-wasting websites, and if I'm not in my media browser, I'll get an error when trying to navigate to one of them out of habit. It wasn't easy to get working perfectly, as I had to create multiple instances of Chrome, which also means signing the apps. All profiles and app-data are in a separate folder. Not doing it like this means you don't get to cmd-tab to the other browser.
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  Brave does profiles perfectly. And they have sync chains - so no online accounts needed. Unfortunately their mobile browser have only one profile which is annoying. It should not be hard to implement it.
  - jbverschoor 3y ago
    Are you sure? https://community.brave.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-install-2-instances-of-brave-on-macos/448807/2 https://community.brave.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-install-2-... " Within the browser, you can create browser profiles. As such, you can have different windows open with different profile, but all on the same instance of Brave. " I don't use any accounts with my chrome browsers where I don't want to. Syncing of profile data should be possible using any synced file service.
    - ReptileMan 3y ago
      This is for macos. For android i am fairly sure there arw no profiles and I have found no workarounds to create them.
      - jbverschoor 3y ago
vzaliva 3y ago
It might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the days when JavaScript was an optional part of the web are past. Now it is an inherent part of the web. We need to accept that there is no going back to the days when it was not. Instead of trying to convince websites to design nonscript versions, we should look for solutions on how to make JavaScript safe. I do not have the answer, but sandboxing, security domains, and rich permission models are things worth considering.
- pantulis 3y ago
  I see people reporting browsing the web with Javascript disabled and I cannot but wonder what is their experience. Not to dismiss them, of course, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what would be of my browsing habits without JS. Perhaps it sounds worse than it really is.
  - 8organicbits 3y ago
    I dont think I've heard of anyone avoiding JS completely. TFA mentions using JS. My approach is to use the NoScript extension and only allowlist the minimum to get web apps to run. Most news sites work fine (i.e. are readable) without JS, so often I just see faster page load times and decreased data transfer. Even fewer ads and decreased tracking are great too, but secondary benefits. I don't think my browsing habits are different since adopting this approach. I use NoScript to cut the junk and improve the experience.
  - ho_schi 3y ago
    Look at Hackernews, Stackoverflow or Amazon. All of them work perfectly fine without JS! And only Stackoverflow (Markdown Preview) has a reason to use it at all.
  - Riverheart 3y ago
    Sounds worse than it is. Most sites work fine without and the ones that absolutely require it will have messages requesting you enable it. Beyond the privacy/security benefits of not running arbitrary code in your browser, the web is a lot faster without JavaScript involved.
olav 3y ago
I am a huge fan of Firefox, and have small startup scripts for different profiles. Sadly, together with Microsoft Teams on my work Mac, Firefox causes it to switch on the fan. This does not happen with Safari (which also supports Profiles, even with a button in the UI). So, I see me using Safari more and more on my work Mac, although there is the occasional page that doesn't render properly in it.
_cenw 3y ago
I actually really hate browser profiles. I use them in Firefox, but via Developer Edition, because otherwise taskbar/dock grouping is a pain. And only for work. My browsing is just not deliberate enough, I end up searching for docs in a work context in my normal browser half the time anyway. And setting up these little intercepting fake browsers like Choosey is a pain too. And then there's the lack of portability - particularly some Chromium based browsers just don't sync the options they want to force on you via defaults, but Firefox also isn't perfect here. And then there's things that just don't work in Firefox. Sorry, I have to use Teams and I'd like video to not freeze randomly. I don't like it either.
pabs3 3y ago
I use temporary Firefox profiles all the time, shame Firefox doesn't support them natively like Chrome does. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604376 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604376
JonathanBeuys 3y ago
Is it possible to restrict one profile to one website? So I could have a "Hacker News browser", a "Github browser" etc and I can't accidentally go elsewhere with those?
- molszanski 3y ago
  You can kinda do this on Chrome with some blocking extensions. Not sure if you can do this on FF, but should be doable I guess
HunOL 3y ago
Profiles and containers probably are the reasons I am still using Firefox. Profiles are super useful and allow to separate addons, bookmarks and history for different use patterns (normal browsing, dev, NSFW).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
justsomehnguy 3y ago
I'm on Windows and solved this by using a completely separate FF instances from portableapps.com.
stakhanov 3y ago
I'm a heavy user of Firefox profiles, but I have two major feature requests: - Allow better visual distinction of profiles, e.g. giving them different colors. When you have multiple browsers open on multiple profiles, it's easy to get confused. - Create a better UX when accidentally launching a profile that's already running. Currrently what happens is that it waits for a timeout and then displays an error message. Instead, it should just give focus to the window already running.
- wwarek 3y ago
  > Allow better visual distinction of profiles For that I simply use different themes and it works perfectly
- TowerTall 3y ago
  > Allow better visual distinction of profiles, e.g. giving them different colors. I use the profiles in Brave for that exact reason. The ability to have different colors on the icons in the taskbar and the browser chrome was the reason I gave Brave a go in the first place. Now it is a feature I cannot live without.
  - _ahxg 3y ago
    same for me. That and vertical tabs are quite convenient. IPFS integration is also quite cool, would be nice to see that in all mainstream browsers.
- ivberrOg 3y ago
  This addon may be helpful for the visual distinction https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler...
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  My solution to both of these has been to create separate .desktop entries for each profile and give each a theme and a custom icon. That way I can know from the window manager which profiles I have open and which one I'm looking at according to the theme. You can then launch a specific profile through the icon, with Super->"ffwork", or with the right-click->open new window if you have it open already. The main problem is that I have completely forgotten how to do this multiple times across different machines and I never remember which combo of FF flags and .desktop values necessary to get instances identifying themselves to the dwm as a separate program. I think this is correct though https://askubuntu.com/questions/1209434/how-to-display-two-different-profiles-of-firefox-running-under-two-different-ico https://askubuntu.com/questions/1209434/how-to-display-two-d...
Havoc 3y ago
Similar approach here - except using chrome for the “just make it work” side. I find the very different visual identity helps with mental separation too so I notice when I’m in the “wrong” browser
- ciupicri 3y ago
  You can use different themes for each Firefox profile https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/
marcogarces 3y ago
I love Firefox profiles, and also the jails options (i used it for example for Facebook and Instagram). But since I've started used Chromium based Arc browser, nothing compares; I still use Firefox for AWS management (with Granted.dev) but anything else i use Arc
crtxcr 3y ago
I've been using three profiles for some time now and it works great. One is a profile that I exclusively run in a Linux network namespace, where all traffic is routed over a wireguard VPN. A shellscript sets up the namespace, connects to a randomly selected VPN server, sets up routing and launches the Firefox profile in that namespace. That shell script is launched through a custom key shortcut. The "normal profile" does not have many anti-tracking measures and privacy extensions enabled. I use this one for online banking or other personal activities which I don't want to route over a VPN. It's also synced with my phone. A third profile is restricted to certain websites. It's pretty much a default Firefox, except for ublock. ublock filters ensure that only selected websites can be browsed in this profile. This profile does not clear cookies on exit etc. I use mainly it for web apps that require login.
Beijinger 3y ago
Hm. I think it is advisable to just use several browsers. One for banking and some shopping (plane ticket websites can be quite fragile) and one for surfing. I use firefox for surving. This are my plug-ins: Allow Right-Click Bypass Paywalls Clean ClearURLs I don't care about cookies NoScript Privacy Badger Startpage.com Turbo Download Manager uBlacklist uBlock Origin Temporary Containers: Open tabs, websites, and links in automatically managed disposable containers. Containers isolate the data websites store (cookies, cache, and more) from each other, further enhancing your privacy while you browse. And some more, that are unlikely to be useful for you but have some use for me: IP Address & Geolocation FoxClocks Perapera Chinese Popup Dictionary
damianh 3y ago
Am a firefox user since 0.9. I see there's a lot of love for Firefox in the responsonses here. However, the profile UI and general managment experience compared to Chrome/Edge is pure trash. No, container tabs is not a viable substitute (my work and my personal profiles don't even share bookmarks). Yes am aware of a third party addon that requires additional software to be installed - this just proves the point further. This issue was reported 13 years ago! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=662025 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=662025 So today I'm using Firefox only for personal and chrome (/edge) profiles for everything else. Only reason I am sticking with Firefox is because of the Android version. If I could get ublock origin working on edge/chrome on android I'd probably abandon Firefox.
- isodev 3y ago
  Safari really nailed their profile implementation in that regard - separate bookmarks, history and session and that in addition to tab groups. I think Firefox is not far from this, only if they could refine the experience.
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    Are there any notable differences between profiles in Safari and Chrome?
    - isodev 3y ago
      Safari seems to be less intrusive about the boundary between profiles. For instance, you can use the same bookmarks and favourites if you wanted to, and you don't have to reinstall all extensions (just turn them on and off per profile). You also don't need an account to create a profile (where I think Chrome requires sign in with Google for each profile, at least on iOS), Safari is happy to sync all profiles, extensions, tab groups, start page settings etc through iCloud with your Apple ID.
- account-5 3y 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?
canistel 3y ago
The same for Thunderbird too.
lakomen 3y ago
There's Firefox Focus on mobile, which clears anything when a tab is closed. And it has special notification-like reminders which make closing a tab easy, like Chrome incognito mode. Clear browsing history is the default action. It has ad blocking included. It's essentially an incognito mode browser.
ho_schi 3y ago
Proposal. One of the biggest issues ever was enabling JavaScript by default. It shall not! I already mentioned it for Epiphany once, using JavaScript shall require a permission like location, video or audio. Both Mozilla and WebKit made mistakes back in the 2000s. If a website needs to do manipulate the DOM or use my CPU/RAM for arbitrary calculations this shall require permission. It impressice how fast some websites load without JavaScript. I use it myself when needed but the misuse of JavaScript is everywhere. From bloated libraries to loading them from remote locations and moving images around (moving it at random intervals…while the site loads slowly) to mining Bitcoins (We were warned?). Ironically you can even dodge nasty cookie permissions without JS.
perihelions 3y ago
Firefox profiles are poorly-documented but much more hackable than they look. Just dig around in the profiles filesystem directory. user.js is a config file you can put your default preferences into, and clone into new profiles: https://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file https://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file (The stuff you configure in the Firefox UI goes into prefs.js, which has the same format). Things like bookmarks and browsing histories are sorted in places.sqlite. You can clone/transfer/sync those with whatever sqlite tool. https://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.sqlite https://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.sqlite I've never tried it, but you can probably transfer entire browsing sessions from sessionstore-backups/. I've used those to rescue lost tabs which Firefox failed to recover auto-magically. The compression format is idiosyncratic; Debian has an out-of-the-box tool for working with it — lz4jsoncat from the package lz4json.
djbusby 3y ago
I've got a custom browser launcher, let's me pick a browser/profile combination for every link I click (outside of a browser). Keeps my Chrome and FF profiles clean. And easy for non-incognito but still disposable sessions.
araknafobia 3y ago
I think I went one step further because all of my tabs by default is another temporary container. I have been using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... extension which allows you to create completely clean tabs every-time you open a new tab. I know this might sound crazy but I am so used it by now so it doesn't hurt much anymore. Also, I can login to any website with 1-3 clicks thanks for password managers so not a big deal.
- pwgentleman 3y ago
  I've been using this for 1 or 2 years and it makes my life so much easier... I don't understand why Firefox doesn't make this and Multi-account containers an integral part of the browser.
d-z-m 3y ago
I take a slightly different approach. I also have two profiles, but I almost never use the "just make it work" profile, because I can basically do everything I want to do with my main profile. The main profile has two extensions, uBlock Origin default settings except javascript off by default, and multi-account containers. Privacy/security settings are generally dialed to the max (sanitize on close, RFP on, HTTPS everywhere). If I have to use javascript, it's a simple toggle in uBlock. If you have concerns about cross-site cookies/browsing multiple sites, you can use multi-account containers for extra protection and/or have first-party isolation on in about:config. > (I implement this second stock Firefox environment not with a profile but by changing the $HOME environment variable before I run this Firefox. Firefox on Unix helpfully respects $HOME and having the two environments be completely separate avoids various potential problems.) Curious what problems the author is referring to here.
mulle_nat 3y ago
Coincidentally, I wrote a post this week on how to make a "Amazon Music Player "app" for Linux using a custom Firefox profile: https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2023/amzn_music_player.html https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2023/amzn_music_play.... Wrapping more websites into their own profiles is sorta tempting :)
spirit557 3y ago
Open multiple profiles of Chrome on MS Windows and each profile/browser instance is separate on the taskbar and not grouped - BUT if you quit one Chrome window you quit all chrome windows regardless of profile. Open multiple profiles of Firefox on MS Windows and they all get grouped together but you can quit each profile independently of other firefox profiles already open. These differences get annoying very quickly for me. On mac Firefox loads separate instances that each get their own launched app icon in the Dock. For chrome all profiles are windows of one chrome instance, quit one you quit them all. These inverse/different behaviors annoys me since I use Firefox and chrome. I also dont like the whole "about:profiles" just make it a compact menu somehow. And no i dont want to tweak css.
eadmund 3y ago
Fun fact: you can assign each separate Firefox instance a different X window class with the --class flag. Then your window manager may be configured to raise windows with that class to the top. E.g. I have something like this in my StumpWM config: (defcommand javascript-firefox () (run-or-raise "firefox -P Javascript --class Firefox-javascript" '(:class "Firefox-javascript"))) (define-key *top-map* (kbd "H-F") "javascript-firefox") Then all I need to do is type hyper-shift-f and the Javascript Firefox is either raised to the top or if there is none, one is run. Meanwhile, hyper-f raises my normal Firefox. Highly recommended; I hope that I will be able to continue using it in the future. Does Wayland support window classes and the hyper key?
collsni 3y ago
Why not just use official Firefox container tabs?
ksec 3y ago
I long for the day when something like HTMX could be included as HTML 5. And we could eliminate 90-95% of JavaScript usage.
throwaway914 3y ago
The real gem of Firefox is Containers. No other browser has something like this. It's something critically missing from Chrome. I don't mean "Just create a private window", I mean being able to create 1 + infinitely many profiles/containers. Firefox has an extension called Temporary Containers that makes this better: Every new tab is a temporary, ephemeral container. By default I get isolation. I have it configured so if I hold Ctrl and click a link it will open in the same existing container (in a new tab). If I want sessions to "join" I can do that, but I get defense/privacy by default. There's another called Proxy Containers so I can have separate tabs taking separate paths out. There are many benefits to Chrome and it's dev tools, and I respect the Firefox mission more for all the shit Mozilla has done. But I'm bound to Firefox regardless of the pros and cons because it's the only browser that can do this.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > The real gem of Firefox is Containers. Amen Sister. One container for browsing. One for my shopping gmail, ebay and Amazon. One for my fake Facebook acct. One for my work gmail, work chat and related. > There's another called Proxy Containers so I can have separate tabs taking separate paths out. I can use this literally yesterday for at least 3 separate issues I was facing.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
    Or even multiple containers for one service. E.g. multiple GMail accounts.
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  The Temporary Containers extension is unmaintained: https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/issues/618 https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/issues/618
  - beAbU 3y ago
    Terrible news about the maintainer, but is that a problem? If it works it works? Are there any critical issues with this plugin?
MrOxiMoron 3y ago
biggest problem is clicking a link outside of the browser... which one will it open in? seems to be the first opened, but then you want to open a link and that browser wants to update, so you have to restart it.. now it's not the first opened anymore, so you have to close all other browsers too before opening the first again and then the others.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
0x00101010 3y ago
I personally use bwrap, mainly for a chroot on steroids and to encapsulate things strictly (e.g. unshare namespaces) rather than profiles. In addition to more persistent "wraps" (e.g. ff may write to a wrap-specific XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR) I have an "empty" profile (including some extensions) to fire up in a pure ramfs wrap. That allows to keep my disk clean, to separate customers from each other, to separate work from personal browsing, and in terms of development/debugging to ignore cache- related issues. That's not very convinient though.
temporallobe 3y ago
I didn’t read TFA but I’ve been using multiple profiles in Chrome for several years now - for work and personal use. Is the FF version of this any different/better than Chrome’s (beside FF’s implementation of Containers)?
st3fan 3y ago
Firefox profiles are not a user exposed feature. If you want to use multiple profiles at the same time then you have to use the command line to manually start multiple Firefox processes. I hate to admit it but Chromes profiles are far superior for me to keep different “Personas” separate. They run in the same process but in separate windows. By far the easiest way keep for example work and personal browsing separated. I give the profiles a different theme so that their windows are easily recognized.
notdiaphone 3y ago
Surprised no one mentioned Linux Mint's Webapp Manager: https://github.com/linuxmint/webapp-manager https://github.com/linuxmint/webapp-manager Should be in more distros. Allows some basic tweaking of profiles and supports more than just Firefox (unfortunately not qutebrowser, though).
presto8 3y ago
I do something similar, but I use a bash script with rofi to display a menu of available profiles. I then bind a hotkey (Super-Shift-P for Profiles) that launches the script. I use Firefox for my daily driver, but for profiles I use librewolf. This makes it easier to keep things separated when using the window manager to switch between windows of the same class (which I bind to Super-`). #!/usr/bin/env bash BROWSER="librewolf" typeset -A menu # empty value means value is the same as the key menu["personal"]="" menu["banking"]="" rofi_args=( -p "$BROWSER profile" -dmenu -i # case-insensitive -font "Hack 20" ) if selection=$(printf "%s\n" "${!menu[@]}" | sort -u | rofi "${rofi_args[@]}"); then profile=${menu[$selection]} profile=${profile:-$selection} nohup "$BROWSER" -P "$profile" &>/dev/null & fi
godshatter 3y ago
I have set up firefox to prompt for a profile when it is started. So my workflow for browsing the web at home is to connect to a vpn, start up firefox, select a profile at random (except for the top one), and do my thing. Each profile is set to remove cookies, history, etc on close. I have more than one privacy-oriented profile because in case things are leaking hopefully I'm hitting sites from different profiles and at least confusing the trackers somewhat. I also randomly select a vpn server to connect to. I keep one tab (the top one) that I use in the open for sites that won't let me connect with a vpn, like my bank. I keep bookmarks in a local html file which is set as the homepage for each profile. All so I can watch let's play videos or research an obscure technical topic or whatever.
mediumsmart 3y ago
Why do I need vpn to load the article? Which countries are forbidden to read it? Did the author want to improve my life too? :)

382 points by ingve 3y ago

If only Mozilla gave us the ability to choose what extensions should be enabled in what containers[1] I'd be a happy camper. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

rjzzleep 3y ago
Fantastic idea, besides the UI needed it should be manageable to implement.
- lopis 3y ago
  The UI is already partially there. You can choose which extensions are enabled in private Windows. It's a matter of extending that to containers.
walteweiss 3y ago
Yeah, and also I’d like it to ask me what container to open for a website sometimes, out of remembered ones. E.g. I have a website I use in just two containers (out of 15), and I like it to ask each time I open a new instance, so I won’t have to choose out of all my instances, just those two.
toenail 3y ago
What's your use case for that? Just wondering.
- g0ran 3y ago
  For example, testing website functionality without an ad blocker.
- ydant 3y ago
  Honey / Rakuten are very useful extensions, but I don't want them having access to every site I visit. In Chrome I use profiles and set up those extensions on my "shopping" profile only. In Firefox I use containers, but can't isolate these extensions the same way
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
You can do it with OS-level user accounts.
- chupasaurus 3y ago
  You can't with containers, they're running on top of a current profile.
fturst 3y ago
Why not use about:profiles?
- mikae1 3y ago
  Because I can't run different profiles in the same window. Also, the profiles don't share bookmarks.

ggm 3y ago

I use chrome profiles to get some structural separation between work, personal and inbetween. One has 1password and two have bitwarden, I can install different chrome extensions and maintain different chrome logged in sync states. I didn't find Firefox tabgroups did it enough for me.

deleted 3y ago
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cosmojg 3y ago
You should try Sidebery! It replaced Chrome's tabgroups for me and made the switch to Firefox much easier.
- pantulis 3y ago
  If only Sideberry synced its state across computers... it's a great extension and I prefer it to other tree tab extensions.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Well no, the Firefox equivalent to Chrome profiles isn't tab groups, it's Firefox profiles, or possibly containers ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37953149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37953149 ). Though I'll agree that Chrome's UI is better.
- ggm 3y ago
  I tried the containerised tab groups and they were OK but some of the menu logic defeated me. Having multiple Gmail identities proved almost impossible to "automate" suggesting the url/cookie mapping and storage wasn't able to discriminate different Gmail bindings. It kept selecting one tab group for the two accounts by default. I would try multiple profiles if the UI was better.

pastage 3y ago

I started this approach recently, I also change the theme of those Firefox profiles so I remember to close all windows. It is satisfying to keep things separate, and also quite useful to launch somethings as limited apps in a desktop environment. There are lots of things that could be done better, maybe crowd sourced Android/iOS style permissions per website.

sundarurfriend 3y ago

Firefox profiles are so underrated and (seemingly) underused. I create shortcuts for every profile, with the command to launch being `firefox --no-remote -P profilenamehere`. After that, I barely ever see the profile management dialogue, I just use each profile like it's a different browser. It's convenient to isolate work and personal browsing, convenient to try out different extensions (eg. I have Treestyletabs in one and Sidebery in another, just to evaluate both and see for myself), and the memory usage of running two Firefox profiles is much less than if I ran Firefox and a Chromium browser instead.

mjfisher 3y ago
That's a useful tip. I need access to several Microsoft live/AD/teams accounts, and they just don't work well in the same browser session. I've been using chrome profiles to separate these because the Firefox ones were a little clunky; for some reason it never occurred to me to create shortcuts per profile. Thanks!
- remedan 3y ago
  Have you tried the Multi-Account Containers? It sounds like they might work even better for your use case. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Yeah, I used to have the same issue with AWS because they kept your account in your session. Having containers for these things is much better than multiple profiles. But for other things, profiles are far superior.
    - starfallg 3y ago
      As you mentioned this, there is now a Firefox add-on that automatically creates the containers from the AWS SSO landing page as you click into your various accounts. It removes the need to create them manually with the Multi Account Containers add-on. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/aws-sso-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/aws-sso-conta...

petesergeant 3y ago

I have found this hard to make work well on a Mac, with the end-state that I use Firefox Developer Edition for work, and regular Firefox for personal + Choosy to make sure the right links end up in the right browser. Could certainly work better, but is sufficient

happymellon 3y ago
Requires an install, but this makes it easy. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switcher/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switc...

Raed667 3y ago

The only time I have had friction with profiles, is with some Google SSO as I use an unofficial extension called Google Container and sometimes the redirect just doesn't work. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...

thyrsus 3y ago

I use multiple profiles on my desktop; too bad it's not available on Android.

ReptileMan 3y ago
Why no browser has profiles on Android? It is true for chrome Firefox and all chrome derivatives.

parasti 3y ago

Wish more was said about how this makes the author's life better. Seems to me that most websites would break in small ways without JS, which would be really annoying to deal with.

dangus 3y ago
I’m not really even sure what Private Browsing isn’t enough for the author’s use case. It does pretty much everything they need like revolving around cookies and local data. I guess they just want to disable JavaScript, because that proves you’re a smart computer nerd, or something. Disabling JavaScript is like the computer version of fasting.
- d-z-m 3y ago
  An important caveat of private mode in firefox is that you can't use service workers, so any app depending on those would break. > Disabling JavaScript is like the computer version of fasting. And enabling it is like deep frying all your food ;^).

lefixx 3y ago

I use them for multiuser and multi-purpose usecases. And it combines nicely with "Progressive Web Apps" so I can have, for example, a youtube app that has all my youtube specific extensions.

sakisv 3y ago

For a moment there I hoped that this was about using some kind of new interface to manage profiles but unfortunately not. While it's been ages since I last used Chrome I remember that it was so easy to switch between different profiles with a couple of clicks. Firefox on the other hand really doesn't want you to use them: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... We just have to hope that at some point in the future they'll revamp it.

deleted 3y ago
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bjarneh 3y ago

> accepts and gives back all of those cookies, and so on, and then it throws cookies and everything away when I close it. Is this really better than just keeping them? Then he has to use some type of plugin to accept those cookies every time he visits the same sites? Otherwise that js-enabled browser sounds just as inconvenient as his js-disabled browser he uses as his default.

d-z-m 3y ago
> Is this really better than just keeping them? Depends what your priorities are. If you're more concerned about convenience, then keeping them is almost certainly better. If you're concerned about privacy, throwing away persistent identifiers like cookies when you close the browser is just good practice. I personally like knowing that no cookies/residue from my previous browsing session are carried over to a new one.

Condition1952 3y ago

on the meantime, sudden disappearance of ctrl+tab support for cycling through tabs on Firefox 118.0.2 (64-bit) and macOS is making my browsing experience miserable. I've tried googling for an answer, hopelessly. I have activated the option in preferences to no avail.

tuyiown 3y ago
It works on my macOS install, so I would investigate if any keyboard shortcuts have been tempered on the system preferences. A way to check that if to try to set the tab cycling on another shortcut on firefox. If it works you can be quite confident that something else is at play. The fact that you have very few results in your issue research is also a strong indicator that the problem might be specific to your setup.
- Condition1952 3y ago
  yeah. That was it. ctrl+tab was set to cycle through app windows system wide. I had been grumbling for almost half a year. I've set it to ctrl+alt+tab. I'm looking forward to discover the unexpected incompatibilities. I had set ctrl+tab to "move focus to the next window" as cmd+tab shows applications. It was cycling through tabs anyway on Safari and Chromium Thanks for the heads up.
  - tuyiown 3y ago
    If that helps, i've set app windows cycling to ⌘+<key above tab>, which is ⌘+@ on my azerty keyboard. I don't think it's a commonly used shortcut on qwerty either.
sergimansilla 3y ago
This works for me, I use it a lot, same environment. Check that your keyboard shortcuts haven’t been assigned to something else.

INTPenis 3y ago

Firefox profiles are great, not denying that. And disabling JS is very important, I've been using noscript for many, many years. Can't even remember when I started. But having two profiles to switch between JS and non-JS seems like a massive hassle to me. I just hit shift+t in noscript and it temporarily removes restrictions on a tab. Noscript mainly protects you from those unknown tabs being opened by malware, that you don't expect. But usually on a huge website like theregister or etsy you can disable that while you do your business. One feature I'd love to see in noscript though is globally disabling noscript by domain. And that is mainly due to AWS using randomized cloudfront subdomains to include assets. I don't want to whitelist *.cloudfront because anybody can use that to host malware.

foresto 3y ago
Check out uMatrix and uBlock Origin.
- INTPenis 3y ago
  I have uBlock origin installed already, but do they do what I want? Maybe you misunderstood me. I want to go into the aws console and based on the primary domain (in the url bar) I want to allow all JS for that tab automatically, if that pre-condition is met. Noscript right now can only whitelist specific domains. So if the primary domain is amazonaws.com and it includes assets from 123.cloudfront.com then there is no way to temporarily whitelist 123.cloudfront.com automatically when I enter amazonaws.com. It has to be done manually.
  - d-z-m 3y ago
    > I want to go into the aws console and based on the primary domain (in the url bar) I want to allow all JS for that tab automatically, if that pre-condition is met. uBlock can do exactly this.
  - foresto 3y ago
    > Maybe you misunderstood me. I don't think I did. uMatrix makes this easy to configure with a couple of clicks. uBlock Origin can probably do it as well, but not as easily; it might require text-based configuration. As I said, check them out. (And please note that uBlock Origin is not the same as uBlock. Avoid the latter.)

deleted 3y ago

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jbverschoor 3y ago

I have a number instances + one with Chrome/macOS for each client/entity and certain activities. Each browser has a different set of extensions, and adblock rules (I can't go on hackernews, except with my social media browser). My main development browser has more dev extensions for example. It also makes tab-management easier, as I can just close the "work browser". All of them have a separate instance, icon, and color. It helps me focus, as I don't accidentally see time-wasting websites, and if I'm not in my media browser, I'll get an error when trying to navigate to one of them out of habit. It wasn't easy to get working perfectly, as I had to create multiple instances of Chrome, which also means signing the apps. All profiles and app-data are in a separate folder. Not doing it like this means you don't get to cmd-tab to the other browser.

ReptileMan 3y ago
Brave does profiles perfectly. And they have sync chains - so no online accounts needed. Unfortunately their mobile browser have only one profile which is annoying. It should not be hard to implement it.
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  Are you sure? https://community.brave.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-install-2-instances-of-brave-on-macos/448807/2 https://community.brave.com/t/is-there-any-way-to-install-2-... " Within the browser, you can create browser profiles. As such, you can have different windows open with different profile, but all on the same instance of Brave. " I don't use any accounts with my chrome browsers where I don't want to. Syncing of profile data should be possible using any synced file service.
  - ReptileMan 3y ago
    This is for macos. For android i am fairly sure there arw no profiles and I have found no workarounds to create them.
    - jbverschoor 3y ago

vzaliva 3y ago

It might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the days when JavaScript was an optional part of the web are past. Now it is an inherent part of the web. We need to accept that there is no going back to the days when it was not. Instead of trying to convince websites to design nonscript versions, we should look for solutions on how to make JavaScript safe. I do not have the answer, but sandboxing, security domains, and rich permission models are things worth considering.

pantulis 3y ago
I see people reporting browsing the web with Javascript disabled and I cannot but wonder what is their experience. Not to dismiss them, of course, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what would be of my browsing habits without JS. Perhaps it sounds worse than it really is.
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  I dont think I've heard of anyone avoiding JS completely. TFA mentions using JS. My approach is to use the NoScript extension and only allowlist the minimum to get web apps to run. Most news sites work fine (i.e. are readable) without JS, so often I just see faster page load times and decreased data transfer. Even fewer ads and decreased tracking are great too, but secondary benefits. I don't think my browsing habits are different since adopting this approach. I use NoScript to cut the junk and improve the experience.
- ho_schi 3y ago
  Look at Hackernews, Stackoverflow or Amazon. All of them work perfectly fine without JS! And only Stackoverflow (Markdown Preview) has a reason to use it at all.
- Riverheart 3y ago
  Sounds worse than it is. Most sites work fine without and the ones that absolutely require it will have messages requesting you enable it. Beyond the privacy/security benefits of not running arbitrary code in your browser, the web is a lot faster without JavaScript involved.

olav 3y ago

I am a huge fan of Firefox, and have small startup scripts for different profiles. Sadly, together with Microsoft Teams on my work Mac, Firefox causes it to switch on the fan. This does not happen with Safari (which also supports Profiles, even with a button in the UI). So, I see me using Safari more and more on my work Mac, although there is the occasional page that doesn't render properly in it.

_cenw 3y ago

I actually really hate browser profiles. I use them in Firefox, but via Developer Edition, because otherwise taskbar/dock grouping is a pain. And only for work. My browsing is just not deliberate enough, I end up searching for docs in a work context in my normal browser half the time anyway. And setting up these little intercepting fake browsers like Choosey is a pain too. And then there's the lack of portability - particularly some Chromium based browsers just don't sync the options they want to force on you via defaults, but Firefox also isn't perfect here. And then there's things that just don't work in Firefox. Sorry, I have to use Teams and I'd like video to not freeze randomly. I don't like it either.

pabs3 3y ago

I use temporary Firefox profiles all the time, shame Firefox doesn't support them natively like Chrome does. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604376 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604376

JonathanBeuys 3y ago

Is it possible to restrict one profile to one website? So I could have a "Hacker News browser", a "Github browser" etc and I can't accidentally go elsewhere with those?

molszanski 3y ago
You can kinda do this on Chrome with some blocking extensions. Not sure if you can do this on FF, but should be doable I guess

HunOL 3y ago

Profiles and containers probably are the reasons I am still using Firefox. Profiles are super useful and allow to separate addons, bookmarks and history for different use patterns (normal browsing, dev, NSFW).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

justsomehnguy 3y ago

I'm on Windows and solved this by using a completely separate FF instances from portableapps.com.

stakhanov 3y ago

I'm a heavy user of Firefox profiles, but I have two major feature requests: - Allow better visual distinction of profiles, e.g. giving them different colors. When you have multiple browsers open on multiple profiles, it's easy to get confused. - Create a better UX when accidentally launching a profile that's already running. Currrently what happens is that it waits for a timeout and then displays an error message. Instead, it should just give focus to the window already running.

wwarek 3y ago
> Allow better visual distinction of profiles For that I simply use different themes and it works perfectly
TowerTall 3y ago
> Allow better visual distinction of profiles, e.g. giving them different colors. I use the profiles in Brave for that exact reason. The ability to have different colors on the icons in the taskbar and the browser chrome was the reason I gave Brave a go in the first place. Now it is a feature I cannot live without.
- _ahxg 3y ago
  same for me. That and vertical tabs are quite convenient. IPFS integration is also quite cool, would be nice to see that in all mainstream browsers.
ivberrOg 3y ago
This addon may be helpful for the visual distinction https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/window-titler...
enragedcacti 3y ago
My solution to both of these has been to create separate .desktop entries for each profile and give each a theme and a custom icon. That way I can know from the window manager which profiles I have open and which one I'm looking at according to the theme. You can then launch a specific profile through the icon, with Super->"ffwork", or with the right-click->open new window if you have it open already. The main problem is that I have completely forgotten how to do this multiple times across different machines and I never remember which combo of FF flags and .desktop values necessary to get instances identifying themselves to the dwm as a separate program. I think this is correct though https://askubuntu.com/questions/1209434/how-to-display-two-different-profiles-of-firefox-running-under-two-different-ico https://askubuntu.com/questions/1209434/how-to-display-two-d...

Havoc 3y ago

Similar approach here - except using chrome for the “just make it work” side. I find the very different visual identity helps with mental separation too so I notice when I’m in the “wrong” browser

ciupicri 3y ago
You can use different themes for each Firefox profile https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/themes/

marcogarces 3y ago

I love Firefox profiles, and also the jails options (i used it for example for Facebook and Instagram). But since I've started used Chromium based Arc browser, nothing compares; I still use Firefox for AWS management (with Granted.dev) but anything else i use Arc

crtxcr 3y ago

I've been using three profiles for some time now and it works great. One is a profile that I exclusively run in a Linux network namespace, where all traffic is routed over a wireguard VPN. A shellscript sets up the namespace, connects to a randomly selected VPN server, sets up routing and launches the Firefox profile in that namespace. That shell script is launched through a custom key shortcut. The "normal profile" does not have many anti-tracking measures and privacy extensions enabled. I use this one for online banking or other personal activities which I don't want to route over a VPN. It's also synced with my phone. A third profile is restricted to certain websites. It's pretty much a default Firefox, except for ublock. ublock filters ensure that only selected websites can be browsed in this profile. This profile does not clear cookies on exit etc. I use mainly it for web apps that require login.

Beijinger 3y ago

Hm. I think it is advisable to just use several browsers. One for banking and some shopping (plane ticket websites can be quite fragile) and one for surfing. I use firefox for surving. This are my plug-ins: Allow Right-Click Bypass Paywalls Clean ClearURLs I don't care about cookies NoScript Privacy Badger Startpage.com Turbo Download Manager uBlacklist uBlock Origin Temporary Containers: Open tabs, websites, and links in automatically managed disposable containers. Containers isolate the data websites store (cookies, cache, and more) from each other, further enhancing your privacy while you browse. And some more, that are unlikely to be useful for you but have some use for me: IP Address & Geolocation FoxClocks Perapera Chinese Popup Dictionary

damianh 3y ago

Am a firefox user since 0.9. I see there's a lot of love for Firefox in the responsonses here. However, the profile UI and general managment experience compared to Chrome/Edge is pure trash. No, container tabs is not a viable substitute (my work and my personal profiles don't even share bookmarks). Yes am aware of a third party addon that requires additional software to be installed - this just proves the point further. This issue was reported 13 years ago! https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=662025 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=662025 So today I'm using Firefox only for personal and chrome (/edge) profiles for everything else. Only reason I am sticking with Firefox is because of the Android version. If I could get ublock origin working on edge/chrome on android I'd probably abandon Firefox.

isodev 3y ago
Safari really nailed their profile implementation in that regard - separate bookmarks, history and session and that in addition to tab groups. I think Firefox is not far from this, only if they could refine the experience.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  Are there any notable differences between profiles in Safari and Chrome?
  - isodev 3y ago
    Safari seems to be less intrusive about the boundary between profiles. For instance, you can use the same bookmarks and favourites if you wanted to, and you don't have to reinstall all extensions (just turn them on and off per profile). You also don't need an account to create a profile (where I think Chrome requires sign in with Google for each profile, at least on iOS), Safari is happy to sync all profiles, extensions, tab groups, start page settings etc through iCloud with your Apple ID.
account-5 3y 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?

canistel 3y ago

The same for Thunderbird too.

lakomen 3y ago

There's Firefox Focus on mobile, which clears anything when a tab is closed. And it has special notification-like reminders which make closing a tab easy, like Chrome incognito mode. Clear browsing history is the default action. It has ad blocking included. It's essentially an incognito mode browser.

ho_schi 3y ago

Proposal. One of the biggest issues ever was enabling JavaScript by default. It shall not! I already mentioned it for Epiphany once, using JavaScript shall require a permission like location, video or audio. Both Mozilla and WebKit made mistakes back in the 2000s. If a website needs to do manipulate the DOM or use my CPU/RAM for arbitrary calculations this shall require permission. It impressice how fast some websites load without JavaScript. I use it myself when needed but the misuse of JavaScript is everywhere. From bloated libraries to loading them from remote locations and moving images around (moving it at random intervals…while the site loads slowly) to mining Bitcoins (We were warned?). Ironically you can even dodge nasty cookie permissions without JS.

perihelions 3y ago

Firefox profiles are poorly-documented but much more hackable than they look. Just dig around in the profiles filesystem directory. user.js is a config file you can put your default preferences into, and clone into new profiles: https://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file https://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file (The stuff you configure in the Firefox UI goes into prefs.js, which has the same format). Things like bookmarks and browsing histories are sorted in places.sqlite. You can clone/transfer/sync those with whatever sqlite tool. https://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.sqlite https://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.sqlite I've never tried it, but you can probably transfer entire browsing sessions from sessionstore-backups/. I've used those to rescue lost tabs which Firefox failed to recover auto-magically. The compression format is idiosyncratic; Debian has an out-of-the-box tool for working with it — lz4jsoncat from the package lz4json.

djbusby 3y ago

I've got a custom browser launcher, let's me pick a browser/profile combination for every link I click (outside of a browser). Keeps my Chrome and FF profiles clean. And easy for non-incognito but still disposable sessions.

araknafobia 3y ago

I think I went one step further because all of my tabs by default is another temporary container. I have been using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con... extension which allows you to create completely clean tabs every-time you open a new tab. I know this might sound crazy but I am so used it by now so it doesn't hurt much anymore. Also, I can login to any website with 1-3 clicks thanks for password managers so not a big deal.

pwgentleman 3y ago
I've been using this for 1 or 2 years and it makes my life so much easier... I don't understand why Firefox doesn't make this and Multi-account containers an integral part of the browser.

d-z-m 3y ago

I take a slightly different approach. I also have two profiles, but I almost never use the "just make it work" profile, because I can basically do everything I want to do with my main profile. The main profile has two extensions, uBlock Origin default settings except javascript off by default, and multi-account containers. Privacy/security settings are generally dialed to the max (sanitize on close, RFP on, HTTPS everywhere). If I have to use javascript, it's a simple toggle in uBlock. If you have concerns about cross-site cookies/browsing multiple sites, you can use multi-account containers for extra protection and/or have first-party isolation on in about:config. > (I implement this second stock Firefox environment not with a profile but by changing the $HOME environment variable before I run this Firefox. Firefox on Unix helpfully respects $HOME and having the two environments be completely separate avoids various potential problems.) Curious what problems the author is referring to here.

mulle_nat 3y ago

Coincidentally, I wrote a post this week on how to make a "Amazon Music Player "app" for Linux using a custom Firefox profile: https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2023/amzn_music_player.html https://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/weblog/2023/amzn_music_play.... Wrapping more websites into their own profiles is sorta tempting :)

spirit557 3y ago

Open multiple profiles of Chrome on MS Windows and each profile/browser instance is separate on the taskbar and not grouped - BUT if you quit one Chrome window you quit all chrome windows regardless of profile. Open multiple profiles of Firefox on MS Windows and they all get grouped together but you can quit each profile independently of other firefox profiles already open. These differences get annoying very quickly for me. On mac Firefox loads separate instances that each get their own launched app icon in the Dock. For chrome all profiles are windows of one chrome instance, quit one you quit them all. These inverse/different behaviors annoys me since I use Firefox and chrome. I also dont like the whole "about:profiles" just make it a compact menu somehow. And no i dont want to tweak css.

eadmund 3y ago

Fun fact: you can assign each separate Firefox instance a different X window class with the --class flag. Then your window manager may be configured to raise windows with that class to the top. E.g. I have something like this in my StumpWM config: (defcommand javascript-firefox () (run-or-raise "firefox -P Javascript --class Firefox-javascript" '(:class "Firefox-javascript"))) (define-key *top-map* (kbd "H-F") "javascript-firefox") Then all I need to do is type hyper-shift-f and the Javascript Firefox is either raised to the top or if there is none, one is run. Meanwhile, hyper-f raises my normal Firefox. Highly recommended; I hope that I will be able to continue using it in the future. Does Wayland support window classes and the hyper key?

collsni 3y ago

Why not just use official Firefox container tabs?

ksec 3y ago

I long for the day when something like HTMX could be included as HTML 5. And we could eliminate 90-95% of JavaScript usage.

throwaway914 3y ago

The real gem of Firefox is Containers. No other browser has something like this. It's something critically missing from Chrome. I don't mean "Just create a private window", I mean being able to create 1 + infinitely many profiles/containers. Firefox has an extension called Temporary Containers that makes this better: Every new tab is a temporary, ephemeral container. By default I get isolation. I have it configured so if I hold Ctrl and click a link it will open in the same existing container (in a new tab). If I want sessions to "join" I can do that, but I get defense/privacy by default. There's another called Proxy Containers so I can have separate tabs taking separate paths out. There are many benefits to Chrome and it's dev tools, and I respect the Firefox mission more for all the shit Mozilla has done. But I'm bound to Firefox regardless of the pros and cons because it's the only browser that can do this.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> The real gem of Firefox is Containers. Amen Sister. One container for browsing. One for my shopping gmail, ebay and Amazon. One for my fake Facebook acct. One for my work gmail, work chat and related. > There's another called Proxy Containers so I can have separate tabs taking separate paths out. I can use this literally yesterday for at least 3 separate issues I was facing.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
  Or even multiple containers for one service. E.g. multiple GMail accounts.
wintermutestwin 3y ago
The Temporary Containers extension is unmaintained: https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/issues/618 https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/issues/618
- beAbU 3y ago
  Terrible news about the maintainer, but is that a problem? If it works it works? Are there any critical issues with this plugin?

MrOxiMoron 3y ago

biggest problem is clicking a link outside of the browser... which one will it open in? seems to be the first opened, but then you want to open a link and that browser wants to update, so you have to restart it.. now it's not the first opened anymore, so you have to close all other browsers too before opening the first again and then the others.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

0x00101010 3y ago

I personally use bwrap, mainly for a chroot on steroids and to encapsulate things strictly (e.g. unshare namespaces) rather than profiles. In addition to more persistent "wraps" (e.g. ff may write to a wrap-specific XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR) I have an "empty" profile (including some extensions) to fire up in a pure ramfs wrap. That allows to keep my disk clean, to separate customers from each other, to separate work from personal browsing, and in terms of development/debugging to ignore cache- related issues. That's not very convinient though.

temporallobe 3y ago

I didn’t read TFA but I’ve been using multiple profiles in Chrome for several years now - for work and personal use. Is the FF version of this any different/better than Chrome’s (beside FF’s implementation of Containers)?

st3fan 3y ago

Firefox profiles are not a user exposed feature. If you want to use multiple profiles at the same time then you have to use the command line to manually start multiple Firefox processes. I hate to admit it but Chromes profiles are far superior for me to keep different “Personas” separate. They run in the same process but in separate windows. By far the easiest way keep for example work and personal browsing separated. I give the profiles a different theme so that their windows are easily recognized.

notdiaphone 3y ago

Surprised no one mentioned Linux Mint's Webapp Manager: https://github.com/linuxmint/webapp-manager https://github.com/linuxmint/webapp-manager Should be in more distros. Allows some basic tweaking of profiles and supports more than just Firefox (unfortunately not qutebrowser, though).

presto8 3y ago

I do something similar, but I use a bash script with rofi to display a menu of available profiles. I then bind a hotkey (Super-Shift-P for Profiles) that launches the script. I use Firefox for my daily driver, but for profiles I use librewolf. This makes it easier to keep things separated when using the window manager to switch between windows of the same class (which I bind to Super-`). #!/usr/bin/env bash BROWSER="librewolf" typeset -A menu # empty value means value is the same as the key menu["personal"]="" menu["banking"]="" rofi_args=( -p "$BROWSER profile" -dmenu -i # case-insensitive -font "Hack 20" ) if selection=$(printf "%s\n" "${!menu[@]}" | sort -u | rofi "${rofi_args[@]}"); then profile=${menu[$selection]} profile=${profile:-$selection} nohup "$BROWSER" -P "$profile" &>/dev/null & fi

godshatter 3y ago

I have set up firefox to prompt for a profile when it is started. So my workflow for browsing the web at home is to connect to a vpn, start up firefox, select a profile at random (except for the top one), and do my thing. Each profile is set to remove cookies, history, etc on close. I have more than one privacy-oriented profile because in case things are leaking hopefully I'm hitting sites from different profiles and at least confusing the trackers somewhat. I also randomly select a vpn server to connect to. I keep one tab (the top one) that I use in the open for sites that won't let me connect with a vpn, like my bank. I keep bookmarks in a local html file which is set as the homepage for each profile. All so I can watch let's play videos or research an obscure technical topic or whatever.

mediumsmart 3y ago

Why do I need vpn to load the article? Which countries are forbidden to read it? Did the author want to improve my life too? :)