Setting Up Multiple Firefox Profiles

The toolbar or add-ons (extensions) are great tools for your Firefox browser. However, these extensions may quickly mess up with stuff which you don’t really need. It may also be frustratingly slow down your browser and it will occupy your browser window by reducing the view area.

Another problem that you may face is that Firefox only let you open one webmail account at a time. To switch between them, an account must be log-out before you can log-in to another one. This is because Firefox is sharing the same browser instance and cookie event you open it up in difference window. This can be annoying in situations when you need to open several accounts concurrently.

This is extremely useful for example when you want to have a profile for you to post content, one for social networking, and some others for your email.

The Multiple Profiles

So, it is useful to have multiple profiles for different purpose and you can decide which one to start as and when required. Each of your profile will run independently in difference instance & cookies.

To have multiple profiles for your browser is simple; it requires no advance technical knowledge. All you need to know is the way to set it up.

Create New Profile

To create a new Firefox profile, make a copy of the Firefox desktop shortcut (copy & paste). Rename it to “Firefox Profile Manager”.

Right click the new shortcut & select Property, go to Shortcut tab and append to the end of the “Target” textbox with -p and click OK.

Double click this new shortcut to open up the Choose User Profile dialog and click “New Profile” to create a new profile, name it as “Profile1″ (or name it as you like). Leave the “Don’t ask at startup” checkbox unchecked. Follow the steps and click “Finish” to complete the setup.

Run the New Profile

You are now having a new profile created, how to access it? Make another copy of FireFox desktop shortcut again, this time rename it to “Profile1″. Go to the Property of the new shortcut, under the Shortcut tab, append -p Profile1 -no-remote to the end of the “Target” box, and click OK.

The -no-remote option is to tell Firefox start the profile in a completely new instance.

Now, you have three shortcuts on your desktop, one is your original shortcut (probably you don’t need this anymore, or simply make it as your default profile by appending -P default -no-remote to the Target box), “FireFox Profile Manager” a profile for you to access the profile manager, and the new “Profile1″.

Repeat the process, create as many different profiles as you like. That’s it, you can now have as many independent Firefox browsers as you may wish.