Apparently, they've also released a new profile manager that's finally simpler than the clunky earlier one. This is the last feature I really need for my workflow to completely ditch Chrome.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management
It's great this is finally seeing some love! There seems to be some limitations in Firefox 138 that leaves it feeling like it's landed a bit short:
- Missing the context menu "Open in <profile>" on URLs or pages. There's often links I want to open in different profile, and I've missed this option from Chrome.
- Existing about:profile profiles aren't importable, other than the initial profile. It looks like adding other profiles manually to the "Profiles" table of the new sqlite database in the "Profile Groups" directory works to add it to the list, but it's still somewhat broken.
- Not documented how to open links from other applications in specific profiles. Passing the profile name (obtained from about:support) to "-P" no longer works, but passing the full path to the profile to "--profile" does. It would be nice to pass just the friendly profile name.
Well, at least it's a start. It can only get better. The important bit was getting the new profile management skeleton in a stable shape. Hopefully everything else will follow. It's only a bit infuriating that they do gradual rollout :-(
> Firefox prevents syncing multiple profiles with the same Mozilla account on the same device. If you create a new Firefox profile and then try to sign in to Sync with the same Mozilla account used in the other profile on that device, Firefox will block the sign-in to keep profiles separate.
Is this just a temporary technical limitation / anybody know if there are plans to fix this? Why should the user need to remember which profile is synced on a given device?
It's probably not broken but just works that way. Profiles are separate in more ways. Syncing all profiles could be counterproductive and unwanted. (for example, profiles which might just belong to different people - though it may be unlikely on a same pc but nonetheless. or syncing profiles that are intentionally kept separate, like work and personal stuff). It's not how it worked before in firefox, and it's not how it works on chrome or other browsers, and it's probably not in users expectations, when they expect separate things to be actually separate. (which seems to utterly confuse people who mix up container tabs and profiles functionality.) Conversely, why should someone remember, or rather, suddenly find out, that every profile in some firefox install is syncing to a same account, even though it is "intended" to be a separate, brand new, start from scratch kinda thing?
And they once again neglect the killer "Mutli-Account Containers" [1] feature: profiles only work per-window.
Seems like they're just here to copy-cat Chrome's similar feature. And worse than the feature they already have, that just needs some polishing.
I simply don't understand Mozilla's desperate need to ruin this browser. Added tab groups first? Removed. Added multi-account containers first? Used for advertising VPN and then abandoned. Fights for web standards? Doesn't prepare during planning and takes years implementing them.
The weird thing is that Firefox has been quick at developing and introducing some features while others did not land for a very long time. If their aim is gaining more Chrome users, I hope a gap analysis was done as well as feature prioritization
