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.
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.
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 ). Though I'll agree that Chrome's UI is better.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Containers with a vertical tab manager (like Sidebery) are chef's kiss, you can create separate tab panels for each container (and configure a container to open in a certain tab panel) so you get even more differentiation of context for each container.
I don't think so, unless they mean that the individual profiles themselves can't be bookmarked. I certainly have about:profiles bookmarked only to make it appear in the URL bar slightly faster when I start typing, but it also does open through the bookmarks menu.
Yeah, that's become my main use for bookmarks. I prefer to treat the URL bar like a CLI as much as I can, and to not have the bookmarks bar take up space.
Actually, it would be kind of awesome if the URL bar really could act more like a command line for the browser. Hmmm.
Seems I was thoroughly misremembering. I guess I was thinking it nice to be able to pin it to New Tab or make it a toolbar button or something, and my brain just compacted that beyond recognition. Sorry for that.
With some revamp they could capitalize on some of them much more. After newtab, the last addition was "Firefox View" for recently closed tabs or synced tabs. I'd wish the same for history, bookmarks and downloads. Those very much show their origin as sqlite browser.
You can take this a step further. You can copy the existing firefox.application to ~/.local/share/applications in triplicate.
Leave the first the same, but add Hidden=true, NoDisplay=true. Then rename the other two "personal.desktop" "companyname.desktop" and change the Name values inside, and add "-P {personal/companyname}" to the Exec line.
Now your application launcher, if functioning correctly, should hide the default Firefox instance (which due to stupid Firefox behavior can do... unpredictable things), and instead you can type "personal" or "companyname" to have Firefox launch with those specific profiles.
It's really quite fantastic, as good a solution as any I could ask for.
I'm 5 days, late, but yes, I changed the Icon directive, and also I use a tiling WM and different themes per profile, so there's zero chance of mixing them up.
You can also add [Desktop action ...] sections to your .desktop file for each profile, this will add new right-click/context menu options for easy launching of the profiles from your Linux dock.
I do that for dedicated netflix profile (with company icon) having DRM enabled, very useful.
If Firefox did extend the Profile Manager to allow for this kind of personalisation and OS integration (profiles showing up as their own, customizeable launcher icon), that'd be another win.
The windows equiv is .lnk. Or in GUI windows world create a shortcut and then modify the launching parameters using properties on the lnk file. You could also drop the string into .bat/.cmd files (but that would probably leave a cmd box running in the background). Downside to .lnk files is they are binary so you have to use an editor that understands them (like windows explorer).
I think it's OK to expect "normal people" to do that, but I've been trying to embrace my OS's feature sets (stuff like desktop shortcuts) to configure my computer how I want it to.
There can be some digging involved, but if you get things set up then you can have your cake and eat it too (most of the time at least)
Indeed. Clearly, the reasons for not making this a bit easier, are not technical. It's there and I know I can create shortcuts and launch apps with parameters but why should I go through this trouble. After I have configured everything, I don't want to tinker with my browser outside work.
Wait.. does this make the profile switching UX nearly identical to chrome? I abandoned a switch attempt because I found containers inadequate and profile switching too cumbersome.
That is not an extension maintained by Mozilla. Why do you think it’s needed for profiles? Profiles are built into Firefox and don’t need an extension to be used.
The in-browser support/UX - the ever present menu options and keyboard shortcuts - are what make Profiles so much better to use in Chrome than in Firefox. The extension attempts to bridge that gap.
Having to use about:profiles or an external application shortcut is a much worse experience overall.
Sadly, chrome does a much better job (for me) with chrome profiles and how well they are integrated. Extensions, shorcuts and everything. This is the ONLY thing that keeps me on chrome. Otherwise I would go FF. Safari added new profiles a few days ago. Will test it, and maybe switch to that
Does cloning profiles (by copying an existing profile content to a new folder with a new name) work seamlessly? Or does every profile have some unique identifier that can cause problems if just copied over?
The reason I ask is because I have some basic setup config that I would rather not have to manually re-do for every profile.
In my experience, just copying an existing profile to a new folder doesn't work -- you're backing up your data, but you're not creating a new profile.
So what I typically do is first create a new profile via Firefox' UI, then I just copy the data of the profile I want to clone into the corresponding data folder of the profile I just created.
Firefox profiles are indeed great. Especially as they're so easy to backup and restore across machines, even different OS. Some simple fiddling with installs.ini and profiles.ini then run Firefox with -P as you say and you're good to go.
I've used this process for over a decade, probably more than 15 years now I think about it. Hard to remember! Sadly it doesn't work with Firefox on Ubuntu anymore due to that being a snap package. I'm sure there is a simple enough solution to get it working the same with the snap version but I instead prefer to remove the snap version of Firefox on Ubuntu and use the release directly from download.mozilla.org as I have the download, install and restore all automated for Windows, macOS and Linux so why make my life harder with snaps just for Ubuntu? :)
I just copy the profile directory. I managed to implant a profile from windows to manjaro, then Ubuntu. Though I don't remember what I had to deal with in canonical's case and their snaps, it could not have been that hard given that I did it.
I don't like profiles, because I find it hard, impossible maybe, to tell Discord to open the funny links my friends send me in the Personal profile, and Slack to open the work related links in the Professional profile.
I ended up having one profile configuration file and a keyboard shortcut that toggled between two different symbolic links, plus a Gnome extension to display the currently selected profile in the top bar, so I would use one profile during the work hours and another one during the evening, but it was slow, difficult to export to other computers and just messy altogether.
So now I'm using Firefox containers and I'm mostly happy with them. I wish the bookmarks bar would change depending on the currently selected tab however.
I use both Slack and Discord webapps in the according profile, why not use that? They already run in sandboxed browser instances (I guess), so there's even less overhead running them in your browser. (I did not do extensive testing, so I might be wrong here)
You are basically saying "Don't use any native apps, ever". With chrome profiles, links are just opened in whatever profile window was last active (this is on Mac OS, but I think others are the same). It's the one thing keeping me with chrome (brave).
I use profiles not containers, and have links opening using the correct profile by wrapping stuff with the `BROWSER` environment variable. For example my Signal.desktop launcher contains this line
This is a really cool trick, but the nice thing about containers is that you can do this based on where the link is going rather than where the link is coming from.
As I don't use them, I wonder if you can combine the two? So that every source is contained and each destination is contained as well. Might get a bit annoying with somethings, but.
I use profiles because I want state isolated for my purpose, not per web origin. So for example, I may need to visit google sites related to my employer's Gsuite, or my personal account used with GMail and phone, or as an anonymous user.
This also means that I have become somewhat resistant to scripted UI integrations. I don't really want my apps or sites calling willy-nilly into each other. I want _links_ which I can deliberately copy/paste into different profiles depending on my goals. E.g. do I want to visit someone's Google drive shared link as my personal account, work account, or anonymously so it doesn't pollute either of my drive UIs?
You could set BROWSER to a script which takes a URL on its command line, uses zenity to pop up a dialogue box showing it to you, with a button for each browser profile, then opens it in the selected one. With buttons for "Do not open", "Copy to clipboard", etc.
Just the dialog box with $1 should suffice. I do this on Windows. I can copy it to whichever appropriate browser, or simply dismiss it. I have my terrible source code somewhere on the Internet, but it should take less than couple femtoseconds for any HN readers to write their own, I suppose. I recommend everyone do this.
I think this is about where the Signal App opens links you click within it. So all links opened in Signal always open in their personal Firefox profile for example
I've been making a "browser switcher" which you can set as the default browser and you can pick which browser to open links in (using a UI similar to the alt-tab UI). I currently have it working with Chrome profiles, but I suspect Firefox profiles wouldn't be too hard (so long as you can open a link in a specific profile from the command line).
The current version isn't really ready for public consumption right now I'm afraid (the current version has my favourite Chrome profiles hard coded, and some weird debug logging to a hard coded file location). But I have been meaning to clean up and release it. So perhaps I'll get around to that soon.
Great idea! I was thinking about something similar too. Having multiple browsers doesn't have to suck...and having to fiddle with galternatives or KDE systemsettings isn't ideal.
May I suggest you to add a small (and optional!) config file to automate your UI - like e.g.:
[Sources]
Telegram=chrome profile B
Discord=epiphany
[Destinations]
https://www.google.com=firefox profile A
If the config is there, you'd then only show the UI when neither sources nor destinations match (regexes). This would make it a must have tool IMHO :)
Yes, I'd love to do that. There is in fact already an app that does this on macOs (https://github.com/johnste/finicky). And you can chain them so that finicky runs first and then calls a chooser UI "browser" as a fallback. But I would like to incorporate it into my app so that I don't have to run two apps (and so that I can make it work cross-platform).
You should check out "Simple Tab Groups". You can bind tabs of a certain group to always open in a specific container. On top of it you get fantastic grouping, and hiding of tabs in groups, and other controls. In this way I have container groups segmented to their own views and have no issues controlling how existing logins work between different use cases. It's also easy to back up and share between machines.
> So now I'm using Firefox containers and I'm mostly happy with them.
Seconded if for no other reason, I rarely restart my browser.
As an aside: Each night I copy my profiles over to a Firefox instance in a VM. I access it as a remote app so I can get to my containers/logins while I'm away.
I've been using Hammerspoon[0] to direct different links to different browsers. With a little work you can basically make links open in the right place every time, assuming that the applications are opening links in the system browser and not doing their own thing.
The problems you're outlining are solved in chrome, and any chromium browser. I'm not saying switch. I'm saying that people have been complaining about these to Mozilla for over a decade and they won't fix it.
Most of the link based stuff is solved in other browsers by opening the link in the last active profile/window you had open. Pretty simple solution. That's all it takes, Firefox however will open links in whatever default profile you have set.. regardless of if it's open or active or not. It's a terrible behaviour. Just fixing that one thing would solve most of the big complaints people have with profiles.
I always get downvoted for saying this, but containers are not a good solution for profiles, not out of the box, and not for anyone who wants to separate work/personal.
The average user shouldn't have to install a bunch of plugins and then configure them to get the functionality that profiles gives.
I'm baffled by that behavior with Firefox. After switching back to Firefox when I gave up on Edge, it took a lot of futzing around with plugins to mostly replicate what Edge/Chrome can do natively. I don't understand why Mozilla is trying to do it the way they are.
I've written my own tiny Python script for this, that launches the right executable based on the URL. It works really well for my situation with two different Firefox profiles.
> I have Treestyletabs in one and Sidebery in another, just to evaluate both and see for myself
You don't have to put them in separate browsers/profiles, you can just switch which one takes the sidebar, on the fly. I use both Grasshopper[1] and Tab Center Reborn or Sideberry and switch between on the fly them depending on what features I need at any specific moment.
As long as a `-P profilenamehere` argument is specified, that dialog doesn't pop up (that's why I said "I barely ever see the profile management dialogue"). Just edit the default Firefox shortcut to have a `-P default` argument in its command section, and you can avoid the profile selection dialog.
If only there would a user friendly/intuitive way to switch profiles like in every other chromium browser.
I tried using the about:profile and created multiple profiles with cli but it is not user friendly at all.
Meanwhile, I am a big fan of multi containers in firefox and wish it was in chrome or edge.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
" 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.
I have the same approach and extend the habit to mobile.
I use regular Android Firefox with extensions like Ublock Origin for fun browsing, then have the beta Firefox with same extensions for always in private mode browsing and finally Chrome for all work stuff.
I tried using the profiles, but found them too exhausting to handle, especially with the way multiple windows of the same application are handled in MacOS.
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.
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.
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.
> we should look for solutions on how to make JavaScript safe
I'm using Qubes OS, which allows to run many sandboxed Firefox instances, with colorful window frames. I run JavaScript without a fear, since each Firefox runs in its own VM, with no data in it.
Unnecessary is key. Fancy animations, interaction reminders, cookie popups... they arent "necessary", but they make the experience _mostly_ better for both users (convenience), developers (easier development) AND management. Parent comment is unfortunately right, the web without JS will only be niche platforms designed for the noJS auidence
Animations and eyecandy don't require arbitrary code execution and should be handled by css, if at all. Almost all websites can be served as data, with the client free to render it how it chooses, which enables far more elegant and unified UIs than anything we have now.
Windows Phone 7 was a brilliant example of this. It was one last attempt by a large player to unite social media sites and messengers into one UI and interaction framework, and it was the most fluid, beautiful and pleasant OS I've used. Now that kind of interoperability would be borderline illegal. When you strip control away from devs about how their data is rendered, the results are generally more beautiful, not less.
I'm guessing that interaction reminders are those modals that appear when you go to close the tab, or prompt you to subscribe when scrolling down further. I would classify both as totally unnecessary and making the experience worse for users. They also do not require arbitrary code execution.
Cookie popups are a result of the ad-centered, panopticon-enabling web.
I know what I'm describing is far and above nojs. What I'm trying to get at is the motivation for disabling js, and what the web would look that if that principle were followed to it's logical conclusion.
You're not wrong saying that javascript is pretty much mandatory, but it's more de facto. To come out and mandate it would be wrong.
Unfortunately the web is in a state that's worse than just javascript... it's regressed into only supporting certain browsers cough chrome cough. Just one example (i've got more personally) from recently: you can't book flights in air india's website with firefox, but it works in chrome.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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-d...
I use https://color.firefox.com/ to differentiate. It's a solid theming system that they built a few years ago, promoted for about a week and then never mentioned again. Probably because they'd rather promote their braindead self-destructing themes (sorry, 'Colorways drops')
>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.
This would be nice, but one thing you can do for now (though it takes some discipline to not screw up) is to use separate virtual desktops, and put the different profiles on different desktops.
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
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] thread[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
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
I didn't find Firefox tabgroups did it enough for me.
I would try multiple profiles if the UI was better.
There are lots of things that could be done better, maybe crowd sourced Android/iOS style permissions per website.
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.
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!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
But for other things, profiles are far superior.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/aws-sso-conta...
OH! this is super clever after a decade of me typing about:config and other that I never remember completely ! this is so much easier ;p
Actually, it would be kind of awesome if the URL bar really could act more like a command line for the browser. Hmmm.
Firefox has useful about:about pages.
With some revamp they could capitalize on some of them much more. After newtab, the last addition was "Firefox View" for recently closed tabs or synced tabs. I'd wish the same for history, bookmarks and downloads. Those very much show their origin as sqlite browser.
Leave the first the same, but add Hidden=true, NoDisplay=true. Then rename the other two "personal.desktop" "companyname.desktop" and change the Name values inside, and add "-P {personal/companyname}" to the Exec line.
Now your application launcher, if functioning correctly, should hide the default Firefox instance (which due to stupid Firefox behavior can do... unpredictable things), and instead you can type "personal" or "companyname" to have Firefox launch with those specific profiles.
It's really quite fantastic, as good a solution as any I could ask for.
If Firefox did extend the Profile Manager to allow for this kind of personalisation and OS integration (profiles showing up as their own, customizeable launcher icon), that'd be another win.
There can be some digging involved, but if you get things set up then you can have your cake and eat it too (most of the time at least)
But honestly there is no reason to not also provide GUIs for using these features.
A simple GUI would do the trick.
Firefox really needs to integrate it!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
Having to use about:profiles or an external application shortcut is a much worse experience overall.
It just significantly improves quality of life when working with profiles, not that it is required.
The reason I ask is because I have some basic setup config that I would rather not have to manually re-do for every profile.
So what I typically do is first create a new profile via Firefox' UI, then I just copy the data of the profile I want to clone into the corresponding data folder of the profile I just created.
I've used this process for over a decade, probably more than 15 years now I think about it. Hard to remember! Sadly it doesn't work with Firefox on Ubuntu anymore due to that being a snap package. I'm sure there is a simple enough solution to get it working the same with the snap version but I instead prefer to remove the snap version of Firefox on Ubuntu and use the release directly from download.mozilla.org as I have the download, install and restore all automated for Windows, macOS and Linux so why make my life harder with snaps just for Ubuntu? :)
I ended up having one profile configuration file and a keyboard shortcut that toggled between two different symbolic links, plus a Gnome extension to display the currently selected profile in the top bar, so I would use one profile during the work hours and another one during the evening, but it was slow, difficult to export to other computers and just messy altogether.
So now I'm using Firefox containers and I'm mostly happy with them. I wish the bookmarks bar would change depending on the currently selected tab however.
This also means that I have become somewhat resistant to scripted UI integrations. I don't really want my apps or sites calling willy-nilly into each other. I want _links_ which I can deliberately copy/paste into different profiles depending on my goals. E.g. do I want to visit someone's Google drive shared link as my personal account, work account, or anonymously so it doesn't pollute either of my drive UIs?
I think a polished packaged cross platform app that does this would have some audience -akin to the intent dialogues on android & ios.
May I suggest you to add a small (and optional!) config file to automate your UI - like e.g.:
If the config is there, you'd then only show the UI when neither sources nor destinations match (regexes). This would make it a must have tool IMHO :)https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...
Seconded if for no other reason, I rarely restart my browser.
As an aside: Each night I copy my profiles over to a Firefox instance in a VM. I access it as a remote app so I can get to my containers/logins while I'm away.
I use Mac and ended up implementing something that I can tweak easily, not polished but works.
https://github.com/mechanicker/chromer
[0] https://www.hammerspoon.org/Spoons/URLDispatcher.html
Most of the link based stuff is solved in other browsers by opening the link in the last active profile/window you had open. Pretty simple solution. That's all it takes, Firefox however will open links in whatever default profile you have set.. regardless of if it's open or active or not. It's a terrible behaviour. Just fixing that one thing would solve most of the big complaints people have with profiles.
I always get downvoted for saying this, but containers are not a good solution for profiles, not out of the box, and not for anyone who wants to separate work/personal.
The average user shouldn't have to install a bunch of plugins and then configure them to get the functionality that profiles gives.
Maybe it works for others, too.
Link: https://github.com/fdw/brooser
You don't have to put them in separate browsers/profiles, you can just switch which one takes the sidebar, on the fly. I use both Grasshopper[1] and Tab Center Reborn or Sideberry and switch between on the fly them depending on what features I need at any specific moment.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306058
(Also, because TST is familiar to me from years of usage, I'd probably end up never switching to Sidebery.)
Meanwhile, I am a big fan of multi containers in firefox and wish it was in chrome or edge.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/profile-switc...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...
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.
> Disabling JavaScript is like the computer version of fasting.
And enabling it is like deep frying all your food ;^).
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-...
We just have to hope that at some point in the future they'll revamp 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.
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.
I've tried googling for an answer, hopelessly. I have activated the option in preferences to no avail.
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.
Thanks for the heads up.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
I tried using the profiles, but found them too exhausting to handle, especially with the way multiple windows of the same application are handled in MacOS.
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.
All of them work perfectly fine without JS! And only Stackoverflow (Markdown Preview) has a reason to use it at all.
Beyond the privacy/security benefits of not running arbitrary code in your browser, the web is a lot faster without JavaScript involved.
I'm using Qubes OS, which allows to run many sandboxed Firefox instances, with colorful window frames. I run JavaScript without a fear, since each Firefox runs in its own VM, with no data in it.
Allowing arbitrary code execution by default cannot be safe.
90% of what JavaScript is used for is totally unnecessary and only makes sense in an ad-based web.
Windows Phone 7 was a brilliant example of this. It was one last attempt by a large player to unite social media sites and messengers into one UI and interaction framework, and it was the most fluid, beautiful and pleasant OS I've used. Now that kind of interoperability would be borderline illegal. When you strip control away from devs about how their data is rendered, the results are generally more beautiful, not less.
I'm guessing that interaction reminders are those modals that appear when you go to close the tab, or prompt you to subscribe when scrolling down further. I would classify both as totally unnecessary and making the experience worse for users. They also do not require arbitrary code execution.
Cookie popups are a result of the ad-centered, panopticon-enabling web.
I know what I'm describing is far and above nojs. What I'm trying to get at is the motivation for disabling js, and what the web would look that if that principle were followed to it's logical conclusion.
Unfortunately the web is in a state that's worse than just javascript... it's regressed into only supporting certain browsers cough chrome cough. Just one example (i've got more personally) from recently: you can't book flights in air india's website with firefox, but it works in chrome.
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.
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.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1604376
Profiles are super useful and allow to separate addons, bookmarks and history for different use patterns (normal browsing, dev, NSFW).
So I could have a "Hacker News browser", a "Github browser" etc and I can't accidentally go elsewhere with those?
- 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.
For that I simply use different themes and it works perfectly
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.
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-d...
This would be nice, but one thing you can do for now (though it takes some discipline to not screw up) is to use separate virtual desktops, and put the different profiles on different desktops.