With the latest version of Firefox I’ve found myself using more and more Addons for specific purposes. I also started “saveing” open tabs when closing, to easier get back into my blogging / working again. Due to these reasons I found myself wanting a “work Firefox” and a “casual surfing Firefox” (mainly for other people who sometimes use my computer so they don’t “mess” with my work Firefox).
Luckily the profile system in Firefox can solve this quite easily! If you want multiple profiles within the same login on a computer follow these simple steps:
1: access the profile manager
You have to add at least one more profile, or however many you want on the same machine. To do this run firefox with the following argument: –profilemanager
The easiest way to do this is to change the shortcut destination like so:
“C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” –profilemanager
Please note that the path should not be changed, only the addition of the profilemanager argument.
2: create new profiles
Start Firefox using this command and simply choose “add profile” and name the profiles you want.
3: Create shortcuts to profiles
When you have the profiles you want you can either always use the profile manager (or check the “always ask” checkbox) or you can create custom Firefox shortcuts that opens a particular profile with the -d [profile] argument. For example, to start the defualt profile use the following command:
“C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” -P default
You can now copy the shortcuts and make a shortcut to each profile you want easy access to. Each profile will be totally seperate with own AddOns, History, Tabs and Settings.