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Mac OS User Profiles for Firefox: Benefits and Best Practices



Just replace with the name of your user folder. The default profile folder is named using eight random letters and numbers with .default on the end (hence our placeholders above, xxxxxxxx.default ). For example, one of ours was called hfoo2h79.default .




mac os user profiles for firefox




Firefox saves your personal information such as bookmarks, passwords and user preferences in a set of files called your profile, which is stored in a separate location from the Firefox program files. You can have multiple Firefox profiles, each containing a separate set of user information. The Profile Manager allows you to create, remove, rename, and switch profiles.


You can have multiple Firefox programs installed in different locations. To start the Profile Manager for a specific Firefox installation, replace firefox.exe in the above instructions with the full path to the Firefox program, enclose that line in quotes, then add a space followed by -P.


To copy all of your Firefox data and settings to another Firefox installation (for example, when you get a new computer), you can make a backup of your Firefox profile, then restore it in your new location. For instructions, see Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles.


If you have important information from an old Firefox profile, such as bookmarks, passwords, or user preferences, you can transfer that information to a new Firefox profile by copying the associated files. For instructions, see Recovering important data from an old profile. You can also switch to a previous profile to recover old profile data. See Recover user data missing after Firefox update for details.


I have a MacBook Air (Mojave, 10.14.6) and for Testing reasons I need to be able to have several instances of firefox running with different profiles each. At the same time.


Is it possible to create a dock icon or alias with additional parameters (just like in this article with shortcuts on windows)? That way I could have as many profiles as I want and wouldn't see the profile manager everytime I start the browser.


Mozilla applications store your personal settings, added extensions and themes, and user data such as bookmarks, passwords, cookies and mail in a "profile". The Profile Manager lets you create, delete, rename and manage profiles. A new profile is useful for troubleshooting since it allows the application to run without extensions, themes, or customized settings. If you have multiple profiles you can use the Profile Manager to switch profiles.


Care must be taken when creating and deleting profiles, to avoid loss of valuable data. This potential data loss may include non-Mozilla files. Be sure to read the warnings given below, here and here, before proceeding!


Note: If you use ZoneAlarm Extreme Security or ZoneAlarm ForceField, the "Browser Security" option to run your browser in virtualization mode, if selected, can prevent new Firefox profiles from being saved. Turn off the virtual browsing feature, if you use one of these ZoneAlarm products. [4]


You can use the Profile Manager "Delete Profile" feature to remove a profile from the list of available profiles. You can also delete the associated profile folder and its contents if you select the "Delete Files" option but it is recommended that you choose the "Don't Delete Files" option unless you are sure that the profile folder contains no valuable data.


You can use the Profile Manager "Rename Profile" feature to rename an existing profile but this is not recommended. Renaming a profile changes its name in the Profile Manager list of available profiles but does not change the actual profile folder name. If you use multiple profiles, renaming a profile can make it more difficult to tell which profile belongs to which profile folder without taking additional steps, such as checking the profile folder contents or looking inside the profiles.ini file and comparing the Name and Path.


Command line options are used to specify various startup options for Mozilla applications. For example, if you have multiple profiles you can use command line configuration options to bypass the Profile Manager and open a specific profile. You can also control how Mozilla applications open, which components open initially, and what the components do when they open. This page describes the commonly used options and how to use them. You can open the command line interface by pressing Shift+F2.


If you uninstall an extension that is installed with your user profile (i.e. you installed it from a web page) and then wish to install it for all user profiles using the -install-global-extension command line flag, you must restart the browser once to cleanse the profile extensions datasource of traces of that extension before installing with the switch. If you do not do this you may end up with a jammed entry in the Extensions list and will be unable to install the extension globally.


  • Multiple profiles and profile management is an advanced feature, mainly intended for developers. Unless you are an extension developer or an advanced user, you should probably not be trying to use multiple profiles.Contents Locate your profile folder

  • Create a new profile

  • Backing up your profile

  • Move an existing profile or restore a backed up profile

Locate your profile folderKnowing where your profile folder is stored can be useful if, for example, you want to make a backup of your personal data.


Is supported in browsers like Firefox and Chrome. These are essentially different instances of the same browser that you can use as if they were different browsers. So it is possible to be logged in to the same web page multiple times with different users. You can also have different sets of bookmarks, saved passwords and add-ons plus your browser histories are stored separately.


This is my preferred option but switching between these profiles can be a bit annoying. For Windows and Linux users there is the add-on Profile Switcher for Firefox which allows you to switch quickly between profiles through the UI. Unfortunately this add-on does (as of writing this) not support macOS.


Using the macOS built in Script Editor you can create a script that launches a specific Firefox profile. You can manage these profiles when you go to the page about:profiles in your browser. Make sure to create one and remember its name before you continue.


Now you can navigate to the app that was exported and drag it into your Dock. Congratulations, you can now launch a Firefox profile using a single mouse click. Repeat these steps for each of the profiles you want to have in your Dock.


This document describes the user agent string used in Firefox 4 and later and applications based on Gecko 2.0 and later. For a breakdown of changes to the string in Gecko 2.0, see Final User Agent string for Firefox 4 (blog post). See also this document on user agent sniffing and this Hacks blog post.


Because geckodriver creates a temporary user profile for Firefox, it alsoautomatically removes all its folders once the tests have been finished. Thatalso means that if Firefox crashed the created minidump files are lost. Toprevent that a custom profile has to be used instead. The following codeshows an example by using the Python Selenium bindings on Mac OS:


More advanced users can upload the generated minidump files themselves andreceive details information about the crash. Therefore find the crash reporterfolder and copy all the generated minidump files into the pending sub directory.Make sure that both the .dmp and .extra files are present.


Creating your userChrome.css file is the first step on your quest to make over Firefox's interface. It takes a couple of minutes, but it's important to take your time and get it right so Firefox loads and applies your style recipes on the first try.


Exception: If you installed Firefox from the Microsoft Windows Store, the profile folder is in an obscure location and the button mentioned above doesn't find it yet. As a starting point, you can type or paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages into the Windows search box (or the File Explorer address bar) and press Enter to launch into the Packages folder. Look for an entry starting with Mozilla.Firefox and click into that folder, then LocalCache, then Roaming, then Mozilla, then Firefox, then Profiles. If you have multiple profiles, you'll need to compare the name on the Troubleshooting Information page to select the relevant one.


Alternately, if you have some CSS code ready to paste into a userChrome.css file, you can do that using the following page and download your userChrome.css file from there: Generate Downloadable userChrome.css File.


Over more than a decade, Mozilla has proudly been leading the fight to build a more private internet. Bringing Total Cookie Protection to all Firefox users is our next step towards creating a better internet, one where your privacy is not optional.


No automatic updates will be performed for add-ons installed using these methods. You will have to deliver a new XPI file to your user for each update. However, automatic compatibility checks are still performed.


This method of add-on installation involves copying the add-on into one of the standard extension folders on the user's computer. Once copied, the next time Firefox launches the add-on will be installed. By default, the user will be asked to approve the installation, and if the user approves, the add-on will be installed and automatically loaded for subsequent launches. If the user has more than one Firefox profile, the approval and installation will occur on the next launch of each profile. For details on controlling whether the user is prompted to approve the installation, see Controlling automatic installation. 2ff7e9595c


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