Can I get firefox to act as two separate browsers?
Say I have a window of mostly music that I want to open with shortcut a, and a window of work stuff that I want to open with shortcut b. Is there anything I can do to get firefox shortcuts to remember the windows separately? I don't want to use chrome or a different browser as the second window, but that would work for specifically what I want to do.
You can have two separate profiles, and two different task bar shortcuts that open up the different profiles. They'd essentially store different user data like history and bookmarks and previously opened tabs, and you could have a music profile and work profile. I did this for work at one point in my life. One helpful thing was making sure they each had different theming to be visually distinct so I could keep track of where to open things.
If you want different shortcuts, use the following command in your .desktop file (assuming you use Linux): firefox -no-remote -P <profilename>
for example, assuming you named your music profile music, you put the following line in a firefox-music.desktop file you'll create in ~/.local/share/applications/: Exec=firefox -no-remote -P music (in addition to other common .desktop file fields)
If your firefox executable is not located in your $PATH (for example if you downloaded it directly from Mozilla), then you need to put the path too. for example: Exec=~/apps/firefox/firefox -no-remote -P music
I actually run Firefox for all my normal stuff and have a copy of Firefox Developer Edition I use for streaming music and videos so I can keep my "work" and "media" totally separate.
I actually run Firefox for all my normal stuff and have a copy of Firefox Developer Edition I use for streaming music and videos so I can keep my "work" and "media" totally separate.
You can have two separate profiles, and two different task bar shortcuts that open up the different profiles. They'd essentially store different user data like history and bookmarks and previously opened tabs, and you could have a music profile and work profile. I did this for work at one point in my life. One helpful thing was making sure they each had different theming to be visually distinct so I could keep track of where to open things.
If you mean you want different desktop shortcuts or menu items to use different Firefox profiles, you can pass the profile as part of the command the desktop shortcut or menu item runs: support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1171685
If you want different shortcuts, use the following command in your .desktop file (assuming you use Linux): firefox -no-remote -P <profilename>
for example, assuming you named your music profile music, you put the following line in a firefox-music.desktop file you'll create in ~/.local/share/applications/:
Exec=firefox -no-remote -P music (in addition to other common .desktop file fields)
If your firefox executable is not located in your $PATH (for example if you downloaded it directly from Mozilla), then you need to put the path too. for example: Exec=~/apps/firefox/firefox -no-remote -P music
Edit:
here's a full .desktop file example for a profile named "work":
file path and name: /home/confusedllama/.local/share/applications/firefox-work.desktop
Content:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Firefox for work
GenericName=Web Browser
Exec=/home/confusedllama/apps/firefox/firefox -no-remote -P work
Icon=/home/confusedllama/apps/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default128.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;text/mml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;
StartupNotify=true
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
Name[en_US]=Firefox for work
Actions=new-window;new-private-window;
[Desktop Action new-window]
Name=Open a New Window
Exec=/home/confusedllama/apps/firefox/firefox -no-remote -P work -new-window
[Desktop Action new-private-window]
Name=Open a New Private Window
Exec=/home/confusedllama/apps/firefox/firefox -no-remote -P work -private-window
This example will give you "Open a new window" and "Open a private window" options too, when you right click on the shortcut. Also as you can see, you can even set a different icon for each shortcut.
To separate them completely, including Addons, Saved Passwords, Settings, Tabs etc., you could use different profiles. To just have different groups of tabs, which you can switch between in different Windows as you like, you could use an Addon like SimpleTabGroup.
firefox profiles should work for this? the ui is unfortunately a bit clunky though
create a new profile in about:profiles and then click “launch in a new browser”. if that looks like it’ll work for you there’s more documentation here - i can give you more info if you want, but i don’t want to patronise you if this is already something you know
If you want to stick with Firefox but are ok with a separate browser, you can always install Firefox Beta, Developer, portable, or one of their unbranded builds.
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