Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the ways you browse

Re:Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the way... by xenophonf on Wednesday November 05, 2025 @07:40PM (#45830004)

Firefox profiles suck. Their UX is so bad. Containers are better but still have their issues. I use Containerise plus Cookie AutoDelete plus Temporary Containers to give me what is effectively per-tab private browsing. The major downside is that I have to copy containers.json (which enumerates all of the dedicated containers I have defined, e.g., for Facebook), my Containerise rules (which automatically puts certain web sites into specific containers), and my Cookie AutoDelete config (which says which cookies to delete and when) among browsers manually. I wish more things supported Firefox's sync feature. I ended up adding them to my dotfiles, so it isn't too painful, but it definitely isn't grandparent friendly.

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Re:Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the way... by celsoazevedo on Wednesday November 05, 2025 @08:33PM (#45830397)

> Firefox profiles suck. Their UX is so bad.

That's what these changes aim to fix. You're getting a Chromium-like profile switcher/manager.

> Containers are better

Containers are very good... for container stuff. Profiles allow us to have different bookmarks, settings, extensions, themes, etc. Different tools for different jobs. I use both!

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Re:Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the way... by 1718627440 on Thursday November 06, 2025 @04:48AM (#45833333)

What are you all talking about? What is wrong with the existing ProfileManager?

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Re:Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the way... by celsoazevedo on Thursday November 06, 2025 @03:57PM (#45840320)

If you look at about:profiles and compare it to the new UI or to what Chromium has offered for years, then I think you'll understand that the new UI is much better for the average user. There are also improvements for operating systems like macOS, where profiles always worked, but switching between them wasn't exactly a nice experience.

You can still use the old profile manager. At the pace Mozilla moves, it will be there for years.

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Re:Firefox profiles: Private, focused spaces for all the way... by 1718627440 on Friday November 07, 2025 @01:35AM (#45844047)

The old UI != about:profiles. I never knew about:profiles even existed for a long time, why I was already happy using the profiles UI for years. I mean the profiles UI, that pops up at startup.

> If you look at about:profiles and compare it to the new UI or to what Chromium has offered for years, then I think you'll understand that the new UI is much better for the average user.

No I think this looks way worse, than the native UI, they have had for decades and hope they don't remove the old UI, so it startup doesn't become slower and more annoying.

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