{"id":11615,"date":"2009-07-02T02:25:20","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T00:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/blog\/?p=142"},"modified":"2009-07-02T02:25:20","modified_gmt":"2009-07-02T00:25:20","slug":"running-simultaneous-firefox-sessions-with-different-profiles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/02\/running-simultaneous-firefox-sessions-with-different-profiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Running simultaneous Firefox sessions with different profiles"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>The more and more I use Firefox, the more <a href=\"https:\/\/addons.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/\">add-ons<\/a> I install, and the heavier it becomes.\u00a0 Recently I got to the point where I am annoyed by all the heavy weight functionality, but cannot remove it complete because I need it occasionally.<\/p>\n<p>The solution to my problem turned out to be pretty simple, even if it required some Google searching and IRC chatting &#8211; multiple profiles.<\/p>\n<p>By default, when you run Firefox for the first time, it created a default profile to store all your stuff &#8211; saved passwords, bookmarks, add-ons, etc.\u00a0 However it is possible to create more profiles and separate things a bit.\u00a0 For example, I currently have three profiles:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Browser<\/strong>.\u00a0 I use this one for generic browsing stuff, such news reading, email, etc.\u00a0 Firefox add-ons for Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, Flickr, and other major sites I used frequently are installed under this profile.<\/li>\n<li><strong>WebDev<\/strong>.\u00a0 I use this one for my web development needs.\u00a0 Web Developer, Firebug, Live HTTP Headers, and any other add-ons that help me do my job are installed under this profile.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Default<\/strong>.\u00a0 I keep this one clean and empty.\u00a0 Sometimes I want to see how\u00a0 site behaves in the browser with default settings &#8211; for this I use the Default profile.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Creating this profiles in very easy.\u00a0 As per <a href=\"http:\/\/support.mozilla.com\/en-US\/kb\/Managing+profiles\">Firefox documentation<\/a>, all you need to do is close all current Firefox windows, and then run Firefox from command line with <em>-ProfileManager<\/em> parameter.\u00a0 A small window will popup that will give you options to create, rename, and delete profiles, as well as select with which profile to start the new session.<\/p>\n<p>The problem that I came across was running several Firefox sessions in parallel, each with its own profile selected.\u00a0 I could easily select the profile for the first session, but when I was starting up the second session, it would just reuse the same profile from the first session.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The solution<\/strong> to this problem is either setting <em>MOZ_NO_REMOTE<\/em> environment variable to 1, or specifying <em>-no-remote<\/em> parameter on the command line.\u00a0 The <em>-no-remote<\/em> parameter on the command line seems to be a recent addition to Firefox, so if it doesn&#8217;t work yet for your version of the browser, you&#8217;ll need to fall back on to the <em>MOZ_NO_REMOTE<\/em> environment variable.<\/p>\n<p>So, if you have a recent Firefox version, you need to run (updating your desktop and menu shortcuts seems like a good idea):<\/p>\n<pre lang=\"bash\">[user@host dir]$ MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 firefox -ProfileManager<\/pre>\n<p>If you want to start Firefox with specific profile (e.g.: DesiredProfile), you can do so with<\/p>\n<pre lang=\"bash\">[user@host dir]$ MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 firefox -P DesiredProfile<\/pre>\n<p>Alternatively, you can export the variable globally, by adding the following line to your .bashrc file<\/p>\n<pre lang=\"bash\">export MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1<\/pre>\n<p>If you have a recent version of Firefox, then the command changes to:<\/p>\n<pre lang=\"bash\">[user@host dir]$ firefox -no-remote -P DesiredProfile<\/pre>\n<p>Other things that you might want to keep in mind are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Some add-ons will be common between your different profiles.\u00a0 For example, I want to have my delicious bookmarks available to me everywhere.\u00a0 For these cases, you&#8217;ll need to install the same Firefox add-on to every profile that you will need it at.<\/li>\n<li>Some bits of configuration (such as custom keyboard shortcuts, for example), will need to be configured in each profile separately.<\/li>\n<li>You might want to have a different Firefox theme for each of your profiles, so that it&#8217;s easier to see where you are visually.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<!-- google_ad_section_start -->\n<p>The more and more I use Firefox, the more add-ons I install, and the heavier it becomes.\u00a0 Recently I got to the point where I am annoyed by all the heavy weight functionality, but cannot remove it complete because I need it occasionally. The solution to my problem turned out to be pretty simple, even &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/02\/running-simultaneous-firefox-sessions-with-different-profiles\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Running simultaneous Firefox sessions with different profiles<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<!-- google_ad_section_end -->\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,6,62],"tags":[20,2351,2302],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-11615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-linux","category-technology","tag-browsers","tag-fedora-linux","tag-firefox"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":44278,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2019\/09\/20\/firefox-add-ons-firefox-multi-account-containers\/","url_meta":{"origin":11615,"position":0},"title":"Firefox add-ons: Firefox Multi-Account Containers","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"September 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been using Google Chrome as my primary and only browser for years now. 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Additional web-specific features, such\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11615"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyring_services?post=11615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}