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Poll: Do you use browser profiles?
25 points by varun_ch 6 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 57 comments
Firefox is adding better profile UX (it’s currently behind a flag), but it also supports ‘container tabs,’ which can get you halfway there. Chrome, Safari, and Arc (and other Chromium-based browsers) support profiles natively as ‘first-class citizens.’

As someone who recently switched from Chrome → Arc → Firefox, and literally cannot live without browser profiles, I’m curious about how others use their browsers.

No, I do not
79 points
Yes, I do
66 points
I use Firefox Container Tabs
53 points
Other (comment)
5 points



Firefox Multi-Account Containers ("container tabs") together with Temporary Containers[0]. Every tab is as isolated and ephemeral as possible unless there's a need.

I also use profiles, for work and leisure. Mostly for differentiating extensions and the data they get access to (no container tabs at work, and very few extensions there overall), but also for bookmarks.

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/temporary-con...


Thanks, been wanting some temporary containers but did not know about this.


Yes, I love profiles. I use them extensively with firefox. I can't live without Firefox profiles (my use case does not work with Safari or Chrome).

I needed to use two tailscale networks on the same machine. And, since I'm crazy, I self-host using headscale, which means both must use the same IP block (100.64.0.x). How can this be possible on one machine?

I use lima to run a little container and inside that I have a secondary tailscale network established. Then, I run a little SSH forwarding script to setup a socks proxy from inside that container. One of my firefox profiles can then use custom network settings to point to that socks proxy and get access to all my internal machines for the secondary tailscale network.

As I mentioned, this is only possible with Firefox. Both Safari and Chrome use the system level settings for proxy, which I cannot use for my other Firefox profiles which need to use the main tailscale network.

I love firefox profiles and cannot live without them.

As an aside, I'm pretty blown away that I can run a secondary tailscale network inside a container running on a host network with a primary tailscale network, and have it all work perfectly. Wireguard and tailscale are incredible.

The only issue I have is that I often have to shutdown profiles and lima machines because the memory usage adds up. But, other than that it is a terrific experience.


This can be solved on all browsers by using foxyproxy or Proxy SwitchyOmega.


No because I have an entirely separate computer for work. I never let personal and business mix on the same hardware. If I had only one computer for both, I absolutely would use profiles.


There are finer degrees of isolation than that. I do shopping in a different profile than normal browsing to make it harder for companies to track me.


That's not a bad idea, but I just have so much blocking on so many levels that it probably won't help much.


I have five personal Google accounts. I use one as my "main" for "kitchen sink" type things, including any shopping/commerce/paying for stuff.

The other four accounts are for special purposes. Each hobby and volunteer concern I've split off to be separate and sort of siloed. I have Google One with a family plan, so my "family of five" consists of all my personal accounts, linked for the One benefits, such as extra Drive storage. But they've all got their separate Drive space, Photos, bookmarks and browser extensions/settings.

Unfortunately, I can only use browser profiles on the Windows 11 system. On my Android phone, and my Chromebook, browser profiles are not supported! For some of the accounts, I maintain a separate Chromebook login, but mostly I use both of these devices with my main Google account logged in, so the bookmarks and other browser profile features are wholly unavailable.

I am unsure why there's a lack of profile support from Google on these devices. I feel like they're trying to encourage separate sign-ins, and it's some kind of security concern, but I'm not entirely sure.


Firefox Profile user

I use KDE Plasma Desktop, and have a couple symlinks to /usr/bin/firefox in ~/bin/ which have different names. I've setup multiple 'Applications' for Firefox which use those symlinks as the 'program' and arguments of the format: -P [hardcodedprofilename] --new-window %u

Sadly, either KDE resolves the symlink, or Firefox does as the program forks.

If I ps axf | grep firefox I can't tell which firefox belongs to which process based on the command line arguments.

It would really be nice if the -P profile or -p profilepath(full) were the IMMEDIATE arguments after /usr/lib/firefox/firefox or similar. "Icons-and-Text Task Manager" isn't smart enough and only has TWO group options (Do not group) and (By Program Name), but I could see future support and/or other task group programs allowing group by firstN arguments or passing the PID off to another program to have it run commands and figure out a result.


I don’t see how container tabs “get you halfway there”? I think they’re far superior to needing to switch your entire browser context to a different profile.


They're not as strong a separation. That said if they work for your usecase then yes they're lower friction by the same virtue. It is very loosely like containers being cheaper than VMs at the expense of some isolation.


How are they not as strong? Do you have an example?


Chrome profiles, for example, isolates browser extensions, bookmarks, browser settings, and saved passwords. I haven't used Firefox containers yet but, based on the docs and demo I watched, it doesn't look like it has that level of isolation.


If you want to have different preferences, bookmarks, extensions etc. set for different profiles.

For example, I might want to allow 3rd party cookies on a work profile but not on a personal profile.


Firefox history is shared among all container tabs. While some of my usage is automatically governed, not all is, hence why I moved to profiles for certain needs for separation


I'll give you my use case. I have 3 profiles, personal, scouts and fencing association. Each of these profiles syncs with its own Sync Profile (email), because they are all used on different computers, some of which are not mine and use the institution email for syncing.

The personal profile use my personal mail, and has various container tabs as needed.

The scouts profile use the scouts email for syncing, share with my fellow scouts.

The fencing association I manage syncs with my personal email in the association's domain, and it has 3 containers: association-personal (for my files and email in google workplace), association-admin (for managing the whole workplace) and backup (recovery email for the workplace and for some other external services before workplace).

With containers only the sync will not work, and also I will be nagged to "switch to this container" everytime I open a google-related page, which I use with 5 different accounts. Profiles and containers fit perfectly my use case.


I'm currently a freelancer (Fractional CTO) at 4 different companies. Having browser profiles made my life bearable again. Each profile has the Google/MS/Slack/Teams tabs for that company and I switch 5 times per day.


I'm sort of in the middle. I use Firefox container tabs, but only in the context of a few properties (Meta, Amazon), via browser extensions. I don't manually start new container tabs myself. I just rely on the extensions to open new container tabs when I hit those specific sites.

I wish there was an extension (or, much much better yet, something built-in) that would let me create "container groups" where I could list domain names or URL patterns, and always have them open in an isolated container group.


The existing Container Tabs extension gets you most of the way there. There's a little button (near the address bar? not at my desk so I can't check) to "always open this site in this container". I just use the default containers that it comes with (plus the Facebook- and Google-specific container extensions) and assign certain sites to automatically open in a specific container.


This ^

Having sites auto-load into different containers elevates the experience from the occasional handy tool into essential component.

I fear the day Microsoft forces Edge for Azure administration.


A year ago I started using them in the developer edition of Firefox on my Macbook, but then months later the Firefox developer edition started flaking out, e.g. I'd open a profile and it literally wouldn't navigate anywhere, or if it did it wouldn't last long. Bizarre. Even mentioned it to a college classmate who recently took a job at Mozilla but he's not working on anything close to that. So I started using profiles in Safari, and honestly, neither is perfect but some stuff worked a bit better in Firefox. I still go open up Firefox every now and then to retrieve a password I haven't yet migrated over to Safari. I probably should bite the bullet and get rid of Firefox developer edition and just install the regular build. I love using Firefox Focus on iOS since it feels faster than the other browsers.

edit: flaking out, since I can't think of a better way to describe what's happening :)


I use profiles on desktop, but also use multiple browsers, and multiple versions of browsers, especially on mobile, for different purposes:

- Firefox Focus as default browser when clicking links from native apps to always open it with an empty cookie jar

- Brave Android as default manual browser, and for watching videos (audio only) with screen turned off - the only browser to support it, behind a pref

- Opera Android when I need to zoom & have text to reflow (it's the only browser which supports this, behind a pref)

- Separate browser only for social media, to not mix history with default browser.

I used to use Firefox profiles long time ago on desktop, but as it required command line flag, and was not first-class UI supported, I started instead using Firefox Stable / Dev / Nightly.


No, I found that using separate browsers is easier. I have 5 browsers on my machine - Arc, Brave, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Arc is for daily use, Brave is for financial apps, Chrome is for work, Firefox is for anonymous browsing, and Safari just exists. Each browser has a different theme color so I can quickly tell them apart.

Before switching to Arc, I used to do the same with installing multiple versions of Chrome. I'd have the Chrome release / beta / dev versions on my machine, each one for a different use case.


How do you handle multiple accounts in the same service, such as logging into more than one AWS account?


I used to use both Container tabs and two profiles. The two profiles were a non-tracking profile, and a fairly vanilla profile (plus uBlock). I'd switch to the vanilla profile when the privacy settings borked things. I made heavy use of Containers in both browsers.

Nowadays, I use Librewolf the same way as I used the non-tracking profile, and I just have one profile on Firefox that I use in the same way as the Vanilla profile. Still a big container person, especially for banks.


I use firefox profiles, separate for a) personal use b) work and c) personal use with different network settings (as I need more than one VPN connected simultaneously, I launch this profile from Distrobox) to connect to geofenced / ISP blocked services.

I use different color schemes to visually distinguish them.

The only problem is that opening link from other apps do not automagically select right profile, so I have to manually copypaste it. Otherwise, it all works awesomely.


The lack of multiple browser profiles WITH cloud settings sync has blocked me from switching from chrome for a long time now.

- Firefox? Sync but difficult browser profile management

- Brave? Multiple profiles due to being chrome based, but they use this weird sync system that I'm not a fan of

- Opera? Sync but no multiple profiles on mac (last I checked)

- Safari? Sync AND profiles, but the safari ui really doesn't do it for me

Hopefully this update to multiple profile UX in Firefox will make it viable for my typical use.


I use them for work versus personal in Chrome. The main use-case is Google Drive. For most other personal stuff I use a different browser.


I use Firefox with both profiles and container tabs. Profiles can have differing addons, while container tabs can't.

One profile has no ad blocking, for the extremely rare occasions when there's a site that I actually want to view that doesn't work with ads blocked.

One profile is for testing.

The other is for regular browsing.


I would like to just use Safari, as its URL-based defaulting to profiles is extremely similar to Arc’a ATC feature.

However, I don’t want my “Work” profile accessible from my phone at all, so now I use Orion for work and Safari for everything else. REALLY wish there was a way to segregate profiles based on device or have it be an option in iCloud.


We have Dissociative Identity Disorder and a number of us benefit from having separate browser profiles. Namely so we can keep any number of our various Discord accounts active simultaneously (we have like 5 of them).

We also use a separate profile for work stuff and another separate profile for NSFW stuff.


Aside, that reminds me of a conversation between a differently-abled protagonist and their commanding officer:

> "Having [your undercover identity's] corpse on my hands would be just as embarrassing as having [your real one]. Schizoid or no, not even you can compartmentalize yourself to that extent."

> "I am not schizoid," Miles bit off. "A little manic-depressive, maybe," he admitted in afterthought.

> Galeni's lips twitched. "Know thyself."

> "We try, sir."

> Galeni paused, then chose perhaps wisely to ignore that one.

-- Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold


DID mood!!!!


I start firefox with -P every time I open the browser. I use it to compartmentalize my browsing habbits. E.g. if I'm working on schoolwork, I have a school profile w/o any social media passwords stored. I also have a general browsing profile and a few others like banking.


I use Firefox with a custom user.js started with ffprofile template and https://github.com/soulhotel/FF-ULTIMA as a skin (this only recently after a general refresh).


I’ve been using the Zen Browser for a couple weeks now.

It’s similar to Arc, but with Firefox underneath. It has workspaces and you can assign different containers to each workspace.

https://zen-browser.app/


On top of separating google login, keeping Facebook completely separated from rest etc... Firefox profiles let me have a bunch of extensions for development (eg: React dev tool) that tend to eat memory and slow down every day browsing.


My current role requires several Microsoft cloud account and Firefox's tab containers has been a godsend. It's a little to get set up but once it is you get a single pane of glass that remembers your settings per site.

I can't recommend it enough.


I'm in the Chrome -> Arc .character arc (heh!) myself.

And, profiles is the only thing preventing me from going all in on Chrome.

I have 6 profiles across my personal, university, and work contexts. And can't imagine living without them.


Container tabs, often with specific socks proxies. This allows for some immensely useful setups that as far as I'm aware no other major browser can do in such an easy way or at all.


I use Firefox, but I've not found profiles or container tabs to be particularly useful to me so I don't use them.

When I was using Chromium-based browsers, I never used profiles either.


Do you ever have to separate work and personal accounts? Or do you use a separate machine altogether?


I use separate machines altogether. I only do work-related things on the machines that my employer provides, and only do personal things on my own machines.


Are Firefox container tabs similar to Edge workspaces?


they are lightweight tabs that contain the execution environment to one domain in which cookies and other tracking things are shared. you can log into a gmail account in one and another gmail account in another one. the shared thing between all the containers is the profile settings like extensions and other network settings.


Technically yes but extremely rare


Yes. I use container tabs—a separate one for each "big tech" company.


FF container tabs are great but they don't solve the extension separation line profiles do. For example if I wanna use Bitwarden for work and another one for personal use, it's only possible with profiles

(I know Bitwarden introduced account switching, haven't tried it as I'm content with profiles)


Firefox is adding better profile UX (it’s currently behind a flag)

I have about:profiles as the first tab in my set of home tabs...for multiple profiles. I am pretty sure I will continue to do that so long as Firefox allows it because drop down menus are pretty terrible UX and my first tab is always just ctrl-1 away. Good luck.


Good to know they are improving the UX, it's currently very clunky


I found container tabs to be useless for my use case:

I want to have two YouTube accounts running simultaneously - one for entertainment and another for coding/AI/science. That way the YT recommendations in both accounts diverge to the different use cases. Using two Firefox profiles was the only way to do this.

I would be very disappointment to see Firefox profiles deprecated.

Minor nitpick - the poll options should say 'yes I use profiles' not 'yes I do'. Same with the no option. Be clear to avoid confusion.


I'm not sure why container tabs don't work for you, they keep separate cookie jars, local storage, etc. and behave exactly like separate profiles for this use case.


I just double checked and you are correct. The containers do maintain different youtube accounts so I was wrong in my recollection.

I now remember I chose profiles so I could keep two completely different Firefox color themes so I know which 'state' I am in (work/play) instantly. Having said that - I think I need to give containers another look since they are less overhead.


Is it still clunky to switch between profiles in Firefox? I remember the ux being so much worse than in Chrome the last time I tried it.


You open up different running instances of Firefox, each with a different profile. Switching is simply clicking on the Firefox window for that profile


I used to. Now I use Firefox for work and Librewolf for personal.


Yeah, 3 profiles: personal, work, side-work




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