Mozilla is working on improving the profile management capabilities of its Firefox web browser. While Firefox has supported profiles for a long time, managing and switching between profiles has not been exactly user friendly.
Currently, Firefox users have two main options to manage profiles. The first is accessible by loading about:profiles in the Firefox address bar.
This opens a page that lists all available profiles, contains options to create a new profile, launch a profile in a new browser instance, or switch the default profile of Firefox.
You may alternatively start Firefox with the parameter -p or -profilemanager to launch the profile manager on startup.
Profiles: profiles are entirely separate in Firefox. This means that no personal data is shared between them. This includes bookmarks, passwords, installed extensions, preferences, and customziations.
The new Firefox profile manager
The new profile manager that Mozilla is working on integrates into the Firefox main menu. A click on the menu icon displays the name of the default profile near the top.
A click on the icon displays all available profiles and management options. The menu lists the following options currently:
- Rename the current profile.
- Delete the current profile.
- Launch one of the other profiles.
- Create a new Firefox profile.
- Manage all Firefox profiles.
The new profile manager is a work in progress. Mozilla plans to launch it in 2024 and some of it is available in Firefox Nightly already.
For that, it is necessary to do the following:
- Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
- Proceed if you see a warning screen.
- Search for browser.profiles.enabled.
- Toggle the value of the preference to true with a click on the button on its right.
- Restart the Firefox web browser.
Closing Words
Better profile management is a welcome addition to Firefox. Long-time users of Firefox know about profiles, but this has not been highlighted to new users in a long time. Most Firefox users are probably unaware of the browser’s profile support.
Adding support to the main menu could change that for the better. You can keep taps on the development on Bugzilla.
What about you? Do you work with different user profiles?
A Backup Profile option might have been useful too.