I know this doesn't address all of the points you brought up, but I heavily use Multi-Account Containers[1] to isolate social, work, shopping, etc. It works well, for me. I don't miss Chrome profiles.

[1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers

Would you mention what you don't understand so that someone can help you instead of just talking bad about a very nifty piece of software?

The last time I tried the Multi Account Containers add-on, it randomly wiped my list of websites after browser restarts and upgrades and there was no way to export the list of websites I had containerized. IIRC, there still isn't a way to do it unless I use Firefox Sync, which I don't.

The addon was also basically abandoned for quite some time with lots of bugs all over the place and was revived only recently. It was an extremely painful experience, to say the least.

I still use the Containerise addon instead because of that unpleasant experience.

That's a shame you've had a bad experience. I've covered many people over to it with most using it extensively with no major issues. I wonder if your issue had been resolved?

> I wonder if your issue had been resolved?

Maybe. However, I have no reason to switch to the Multi Account Containers addon now considering the Containerise addon works well.

What exactly prevents you from using Firefox profiles? They are working fine, for me at least. I can't see a reason for Firefox devs to be ashamed.

Similarly confused, I use profiles heavily every day

It may be due to my workflow; I simply hit a key combination to either open my personal profile or the one for work, for example.

Nothing fancy... The -P option for Firefox along with the usual key bindings for my window manager

Personally it's the integrations. I have a Chromebook, which integrates with GSuite, and integrates with Android. I can manage extensions, permissions, etc, all from there. This is important since I use this Chromebook for work, but it would be cumbersome to run Firefox and Chrome simultaneously.

With Firefox I get just-a-browser, and I need more than that. If Firefox had a way for me to manage the browser across devices it would be more viable for me.

First, you can sync your browser with your Firefox account, so this is I guess what you want?

Second, for the Google (Gsuite, Android) integration, you could just use a work browser (aka Chrome).

Third, if you use all that Google stuff in your private life, I don't really see why you would be worried about Manifest 3-related privacy and ads/tracking matters anyway. I mean, Google already has your data.

> First, you can sync your browser with your Firefox account, so this is I guess what you want?

Maybe? Probably not though. For example, with GSuite I can manage the settings via the web UI and then have policies that enforce that those settings are verified correct.

> Third, if you use all that Google stuff in your private life, I don't really see why you would be worried about Manifest 3-related privacy and ads/tracking matters anyway. I mean, Google already has your data.

I opt into Google having my data, but I want to be able to opt out of running arbitrary content in my browser. uBlock and uMatrix give me that, Manifest v3 takes that away.

I use “regular” Firefox for personal stuff and the developer edition for work. After trying a lot of approaches for that separation, it’s what’s worked best for me. Also the developer edition has a cool/different icon

You can run the profile manager from the terminal with `firefox --profilemanager` and manage the profiles from there Then you can create separate 'shortcuts' for each profile with this `firefox --profile [path to the profile]`

I have been using this workflow for years now. It separates literally everything: cookies, site settings, window size and position, configuration, add-on settings, etc.

This way I can emulate a fresh profile, a restricted profile with tracking protection, and a completely locked down profile with more or less everything disabled. My private Firefox in completely unaffected by my development profiles and I can open multiple profiles at once, theme them differently, and I know exactly which kind of instance I'm using.

It's excellent and works flawlessly for over a decade now.

How do you choose in which profile links from outside of the browser should open?

This depends on what profile you make the the default startup profile in the profile manager

Do you know if there is a way to be prompted each time?

You could find where in your desktop environment it decides which app to open, and replace "firefox" with "firefox --profilemanager".

If you’re on a Mac, Choosy is a great app for this:

https://www.choosyosx.com/

I have no affiliation with them, just a long-time happy user.

Have you tried Firefox containers[1]? Or another alternative could be two Firefox versions installed, regular and the developer edition.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

You can still manage profiles in FF via about:profiles, but I 100% agree it's not accessible enough.

You can add a bookmark shortcut button with the address about:profile and that makes it more accessible. I added a key shortcut to the bookmark itself. Then I can use cmd + L to focus the address bar, type the letter p, and hit Enter. That opens the profiles page and it’s reasonably fast.

I also created a similar bookmark with a JavaScript snippet that removes fixed elements from the page, typically top bars. I now have it in my muscle memory.

Until Mozilla disables bookmark keywords on the desktop browser, too (on the android version they have been nuked already).

the portable version is also an option if the user passes a location as the profile path. This can be made more convenient by adding shortcuts for each profile.

The UX could definitely be improved, but it's manageable in my opinion

The "portable version" is not maintained pr built by Mozilla and breaks/disables the sandbox. Don’t use it.

But Firefox has Tab Containers? They are (afaik) not fully fledged profiles but rather separated containers (cookies, history etc)

History is not separated by containers.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...

None of the ‘etc’ includes things that would properly support separate work vs personal profiles to the point that your company doesn’t need to access your personal data to inspect it in case of discovery requests / court order. Having proper separate profiles also allows sync so that an office PC can use the work profile only, while at home you have access to both work + personal and your work profile syncs with that of your office pc.

I can't imagine discovery requests are going to be written in such a way that they're friendly to whatever browser separation you're using.

Yes. Discovery requests are going to be based on device, not browser profiles. If you use a personal computer to access work things that computer is going into discovery. Do not pass go. Do not whine about your browser profiles. End of argument.

Agreed. While I love containers, they are not an equivalent because they do not separate out the bookmarks, history and sync profile. With Chrome I was able to have a Chrome Profile on my work laptop that syncs to one of the profiles on my desktop computer. The desktop computer had a separate profile for my personal browsing. It worked really well.

The firefox profiles work, but they're too bare bones to ACTUALLY be usable. A few major problems I've had are:

* No easy way to start firefox twice in two separate profiles, while having separate task bar icons (which can optionally be pinned) in Windows 10. I did eventually get it to work by mucking about with creating my own shortcuts, photoshopping the firefox icon, using separate themes on both, etc. On Chrome you can just click the profile manager icon and you're pretty much done.

* When firefox is running twice with separate profiles you can't easily change the default profile. So it's awkward to get links from other applications to open in the firefox instance you want.

* Speaking of, sometimes firefox would just give me the "Firefox is already running" dialog when clicking a link. Only fix I found was to terminate all firefox processes, start my two profiles again and then click the link again.

It would be lovely if firefox made the profiles easier to manage and switch between.

What exactly are you missing from the profile feature in Firefox? It's barebones to setup, but I used it for similar purpose a while back and thought it was ok enough.

You can launch Firefox with a given profile from the CLI. Just make your own shortcuts.

I worked around it that I always use Chrome for work and Firefox privately. As opposed to private browsing I don't care if my work related browsing is tracked, slower, less secure or use more bandwidth. Let the company that mandates Chrome or Edge pay for the consequences.

So, just switch to Vivaldi. Same renderer and JS engine as Chrome but the devs have drawn a line in the sand about stuff like manifest v3:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-...

Why do so many think it has to be all or nothing. I'm completely happy to use Chrome for work as some things require it, and Firefox for personal use. It even has the benefit of the visual differences being a cue as to what 'mode' I'm in for keeping mental context separated.

Firefox has containers that achieve the same purpose. Have you tried using them?

firefox -P [profile name] -no-remote

EDIT: or, to bring up the profile manager:

firefox -P -no-remote

Do that twice, running two firefoxes using two profiles, then click a link in a third application. This tends to try to launch a third firefox process which hangs for a while then says "application already running".

Okay, so you run one of them without no-remote. I had some issues with that, but it mostly works. Now how do you change the default profile? You completely stop firefox, update your shortcuts and finally, in my case, give up on using multiple profiles with firefox on a day to day basis.

I agree this is a pain point when using multiple profiles, and something Firefox should improve.

However it's not a huge issue. Mostly just copy-pasting links from mails etc instead of clicking, which gives the nice benefit of observing which site exactly you're about to visit.

Not being able to open links is pretty high on the list of huge issues for a browser.

Sure, all it does is it breaks left clicking hyperlinks in all other applications.

Navigate to about:profiles and click “Set as Default Profile” for one of them.

That button grays out when both profiles are running. Try it.

Also if the firefox instance is launched with no-remote, this won't even work as expected. Instead it'll start another firefox instance with remoting enabled, which will fail to start because the profile is already in use.

There are profiles. I run multiple profiles in Firefox daily. I also use multi-account containers and temp containers inside each profile for further granulation.

what is deficient with firefox’s profile manager in that regard? last time i used it, it completely isolated every part of the browser experience, which seems to be what you want.

in any case, if containers don’t work for you, you can run developer edition for work and standard edition for personal. this is what i do, and the added advantage is that you can use containers on top of it for more granular isolation within each context.

Open Firefox, type 'about:profiles' in address bar... Is that what you're after?

It’s odd to me that FF has not exposed this function more readily to the user but it indeed works just the same as Chrome

about:profiles is good enough for me, although as barebones as ever.