Using Multiple Browser Profiles in Any Browser

We people do browsing everyday with our favorite web browsers. While we do browsing our web browsers store all our personal data like bookmarks we mention, history, settings, extensions and many more in a profile. When we need any of these bookmarks or something else we have to search through the profile and we can use it. But for more productive browsing most of the web browsers allow us to create separate profiles so that we split the things up and manage it well, like we can create one profile for work, one for games, one for entertainment etc. You can even use multiple profiles at the same time, being logged into different accounts in each of them. Now, let’s see how we can create multiple profiles in different browsers…

Mozilla Firefox:-

Firefox has in-built support for multiple profiles, and few ones know about this, as this feature is a bit hidden. To access the Firefox profile manager, you’ll first need to close all Firefox windows. With Firefox closed, press the windows key to open the Start menu, and then type the following line to search and press Enter.

      firefox.exe -p

 If this does not work, you may need to enter the full path to the Firefox.

On 32 bit:-

     “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” –p

On 64 bit:-

  “C:\Program Files(x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” –p

                                                 Fig: 1

The profile manager will open. Use the Create profile button to create new browser profiles. If you want Firefox should ask you to choose a profile every time, uncheck the Don’t ask at startup option.

                                                          Fig: 2

Firefox allows you to run a single browser profile at a time by default. But you can change this and have multiple profiles running at the same time, for that you’ll need to launch the Firefox with –no-remote switch. To do this, use the following command:-

      firefox.exe –p –no-remote

You’ll need to use the –no-remote option to launch each Firefox instance, but the Firefox should be close completely. You can also add this option to your Firefox shortcuts to make the work little easier.

And to easily switch between multiple Firefox profiles, you may want to install the ProfileSwitcherextension.

Chrome:-

Chrome makes using multiple browser profiles easy. To create browser profiles, open the Settings page, click the menu button and select settings, and then click Add new user under Users.

                                                      Fig: 3

Select the user icon and provide a name. In addition to their own bookmarks, history and other settings, each user has their own Google Sync settings and can be logged into their own Google accounts.

                                                        Fig: 4

You can then switch between profiles by clicking the icon at the top left corner of your browser window.

Fig: 5

Internet Explorer:-

Internet Explorer does not allow you to use separate browser profiles. However, it does have a feature that can be used to create browser windows with their own separate cookies.

To use this feature, press that Alt key button to open the hidden menu bar, click File, and select New Session.

                                                        Fig: 6

The new browser window will share the favorites, history and all other settings, but it will have its own separate cookies. You can use this feature to log into the multiple accounts on the same website, just as the profile features allows us to do in Chrome and Firefox.