home > Internet > Using the Profile Manager to create and delete Firefox profiles. All about Firefox profiles: create, download, delete How to create profiles in Mozilla

Using the Profile Manager to create and delete Firefox profiles. All about Firefox profiles: create, download, delete How to create profiles in Mozilla

Firefox stores your personal information such as bookmarks, passwords and Personal settings in a set of files called a profile, which is stored separately from program files Firefox. You can have multiple profiles, each containing its own set of data. With the profile manager, you can create, delete, rename profiles, and switch between them.

If you have (or plan to) have multiple installations of Firefox on the same computer, see Custom profiles for each installation of Firefox .
If you're troubleshooting a Firefox-related issue: The Firefox cleanup feature can fix many issues by resetting Firefox to its original state. In this case, the information you need will be saved. Try this feature before you start the lengthy troubleshooting process.

Launching the Profile Manager

Manage profiles when Firefox is open

Enter about:profiles into the Firefox address bar and click the button Enterreturn. This will open the page About profiles.

The following options are available:

To manage profiles, find the profile you want to edit and select the appropriate button below that profile:

Rename Click this button to change the profile name in the Profile Manager. Note: The folder that contains the files for the profile is not renamed.

Set as default profile This option allows you to switch profiles. Click this button to have Firefox use this profile by default on startup.

Launch another browser with this profile If you click this button, another Firefox window will open using this profile.

Launching the Profile Manager when Firefox is closed

Note: Another way to launch the profile manager from the search field in the menu Windows start. Close Firefox (if it's running), click , type firefox.exe -P and hit enter .

If the instructions above don't work, or if you have multiple installations of Firefox, use the following instructions.

Multiple installations of Firefox

You can install multiple Firefox programs in different locations. To start the profile manager for a specific Firefox installations, replace firefox.exe in the instructions above with the full path to Firefox, enclose this string in quotation marks, and then add a space and -P.

Examples:
"Firefox (32-bit) on 64-bit Windows"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\ Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P

"Firefox (32-bit) on 32-bit Windows" (or "64-bit Firefox on 64-bit Windows")
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P

The Firefox Profile Manager (Select User Profile) window should open.

Note: You may need to tweak these instructions if Firefox is not installed in the default path (for example, if there are multiple installations).

If Firefox is already included in your Linux distribution or you installed Firefox using the package manager on your Linux distribution:

The startup parameter is capitalized P. Also, you can use the -ProfileManager option instead of the -P option.
The Firefox Profile Manager (Select User Profile) window should open.

If the Profile Manager window still doesn't appear, it's possible that Firefox is already running in the background, even if it's not visible. Close all running copies of Firefox or restart your computer and try again.

Create a profile

After starting the Profile Manager as described above, you can create a new, additional profile as follows:

You will be returned to the Profile Manager window, which will list new profile. When you first launch Firefox with a new profile, you will be prompted to sign in to your Firefox account so you can (see below).

Deleting a profile

After starting the Profile Manager as described above, you can delete an existing profile as follows:

Renaming a Profile

After starting the Profile Manager as described above, you can rename the profile as follows:

In the profile manager, select the profile to rename and click the Rename… button.
Enter a new name for the profile. Type in a new profile name and click OK .
- Note: The folder containing the profile files will not be renamed.

Options

These options are only available when you .

Work autonomously

Selecting this option downloads the selected profile and launches Firefox without an Internet connection. You can view previously visited web pages and experiment with your profile.

Use selected profile without asking at startup

If you have multiple profiles, this setting tells Firefox what to do on startup:

If you check this box, Firefox will automatically load the selected profile on startup. To access other profiles, you must first launch the Profile Manager.
If you uncheck this option, Firefox will show you the Profile Manager every time you start Firefox so that you can choose which profile to use.

Use Sync with new profile

When you first open Firefox in a new profile, a "Welcome to Firefox" page will open with a place to enter your address Email.

Enter your email address and click Continue to create or sign in to your Firefox account. You can then set up "sync" for the new profile so you can share bookmarks, browsing history, passwords, and other user data with other Firefox profiles or devices.

If you're already syncing on another profile or device, please enter your Firefox account email and password so your new profile can use these settings.

If you're not using sync, don't want to sync data with a new profile, or if you want to decide later, you can sign in to your Firefox account and select "Don't sync this device" (see Disabling Firefox sync) or skip this step.

For getting additional information, read the articles How do I set up Sync on my computer? and How do I choose what kinds of information Firefox syncs? .

Moving a Profile

Restoring information from an old profile

If you have important information in the old Firefox profile, such as bookmarks, passwords, or user preferences, you can transfer this information to the new Firefox profile by copying the appropriate files. For more information, read the article Recover important data from an old profile. You can also switch to a previous profile to restore your old profile data. Read the article How to recover user data lost after updating Firefox for details.

// The following good people helped write this article:Unghost , Harry , Anticisco Freeman , Valery Ledovskoy , SwanMr.pound , Nikita Gutsenkov . You too can help.

Hello everyone who visited our site. In one of the previous articles, we examined in detail what is Mozilla browser Firefox. This is the folder where all our Firefox settings. It is created by default when you first install the browser. But sometimes a situation arises when you need several profiles for this browser (for example, other family members or just a separate one for work). How to do it? The Profile Manager will help us with this. With it, you can add, rename, delete a profile, and also set some settings.

Launching the profile manager.

Before starting the manager, check if the Mozilla Firefox browser is closed. If you have it open, then you need to close it. Then we'll use . Press it and without releasing press R (Win + R). A window "" will open in front of us, enter in the field firefox.exe -P

And press " OK» You will see the profile manager in front of you.

Here you will see your default profile where all your data is stored. To perform all further actions that we will describe below, return to this screenshot.

Suppose we want to create a new profile that would store bookmarks, a history for work or another family member.

Create a new Firefox profile

To do this, we just need to click on the button " Create…"(number 1). The Create Profile Wizard opens.

Now we need to come up with a name for our new profile. Since we plan to use it for production purposes, let's give it a suitable name, for example, - For work. Or something else, at your discretion.

Next, you need to specify the folder where the created profile will be stored. By default, a folder with the profile name is created. You can use this option. If you want to set your own, then click " Select folder...". And in the explorer specify desired folder. We recommend creating a clean, empty folder for the profile, but if you install it in a directory that contains some files, then you risk losing them when deleting the profile.

Now that we have set the name, indicated the location, click " Ready". A new profile will be created and displayed in the profile manager.

Select the created profile and launch the browser. It will open in the form in which it was after the first installation: there will be no bookmarks, the history will be empty, you will not find any extensions or applications either.

How to rename a profile

If, when creating a new profile, you made a mistake in its name, or simply decided to change it, then this can be easily corrected. To do this, select the desired profile and select the button under the number 2 - " Rename».

Then we give a new name or fix the error and click " OK". The profile will be renamed.

Delete Firefox Profile

If you stop using a profile, you can safely delete it. To do this, select the appropriate button in the manager - under the number 3.

We will be offered 2 options for removal.

Do not delete files. Selecting this option will delete the profile from the manager, however, all your data files will be saved on your hard drive, which can be used for a new profile in the future.

Delete files. In this case, deletion occurs not only from the manager, but also from all files with your data and settings. The profile folder is completely removed from the computer. After that, you won't be able to recover anything. Therefore, take this fact into account when choosing this option.

Profile manager settings.

Work autonomously. If you set this option for a specific profile, then Firefox will start in offline without internet connection. In this case, you can browse the sites you have visited before and experiment with your profile.

Run selected profile without prompt. If this checkbox is checked for a particular profile, that profile will be loaded automatically when Firefox starts.

If you need to switch between profiles, then uncheck this option. Now, every time you start the browser, you will choose the profile you need.

On this, perhaps, let me finish. Today we looked at how to create, rename, delete a Firefox profile. Share in the comments if you use your profiles in this browser.

See you soon and good mood to all!!!

Man is neither an angel nor an animal, and his misfortune is that the more he strives to become like an angel, the more he turns into an animal.

Blaise Pascal

Firefox saves your personal information such as bookmarks, passwords, and user preferences in a set of files called your , which is stored in a separate location from the Firefox program files. You can have multiple Firefox profiles, each containing a separate set of user information. The Profile Manager allows you to create, remove, rename, and switch profiles.

If you have (or plan to have) multiple installations of Firefox on one computer, see Dedicated profiles per Firefox installation .
If you are troubleshooting a problem with Firefox: The Refresh Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its default state while saving your essential information. Consider using it before going through a lengthy troubleshooting process.

Starting the Profile manager

Manage profiles when Firefox is open

type about:profiles into the address bar and press the Enterreturn key. This will open the About Profiles page.

The following options are available:

To manage profiles, find the profile you want to change and choose from these buttons underneath that profile:

Rename Click this to change the name of a profile in the Profile Manager. Note: The folder containing the files for the profile is not renamed.

Set as default profile This option allows you to switch profiles. Click this to make Firefox use this profile by default at startup.

Launch profile in new browser When you click this, another Firefox window will open using that profile.

Start the Profile Manager when Firefox is closed

Note: Another way to start the Profile Manager is from the Search box in the Windows Start menu. Close Firefox (if open), press , type firefox.exe -P and press enter.

If the above instructions do not work or if you have multiple installations of Firefox, use the following instructions instead.

Multiple Firefox installations

You can have multiple Firefox programs installed in different locations. To start the Profile Manager for a specific Firefox installation, replace firefox.exe in the above instructions with the full path to the Firefox program, enclose that line in quotes, then add a space followed by -P.

Examples:
Firefox (32-bit) on 64-bit Windows
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P

Removing a profile

After starting the Profile Manager as explained above, you can remove an existing profile as follows:

Renaming a profile

After starting the Profile Manager as explained above, you can rename a profile as follows:

In the Profile Manager, select the profile to rename, and then click Rename Profile... .
Enter the new name for the profile. Type in the new profile name, and click on OK .
- note: The folder containing the files for the profile is not renamed.

Options

Work Offline

Choosing this option loads the selected profile and starts Firefox without connecting to the Internet. You can view previously viewed web pages and experiment with your profile.

Use the selected profile without asking at startup

When you have multiple profiles, this option tells Firefox what to do at startup:

If you check this option, Firefox will automatically load the selected profile at startup. To access other profiles, you must start the Profile Manager first.
If you uncheck this option, Firefox will show you the Profile Manager each time you start Firefox, so that you can select a profile to use.

Use Sync with a new profile

When you first open Firefox in a new profile, a Welcome to Firefox page will open, with a space to enter your email address.

Today, dear readers, I will tell you how to create a new profile in Mozilla Firefox. Why might you need it? The reasons may be different, I will give a few examples. For example, one computer and one account used by different users. They can use two profiles in Mozilla Firefox to avoid confusion. Another example: you need to completely clear your browser. This can be done using settings or third-party utilities, or you can simply, in which there will be no information at all. In general, be that as it may, let's start creating a new profile in Mozilla Firefox.

Instructions for creating a profile

The example will be shown based on Windows 7, but it can be safely applied on Windows 8 (8.1).

After you have closed the Internet browser, press the key combination WIN + R, so the "Run" window will appear.

Enter the command in the window firefox.exe -ProfileManager, then press the OK button or the Enter key on your keyboard.

This must be done in order to start the profile manager. It can also be launched in another way. For example, instead of the command firefox.exe -ProfileManager enter "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -ProfileManager or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -ProfileManager depending on the bitness of your system.

So, the profile manager is launched. Here's what it looks like.

Click on the "Create" button, after which the window of the wizard for creating a profile will appear. Click "Next".

Here you will need to enter a name for the new profile and optionally choose where the data for the specified profile will be stored. If you don't want to change the location of the directory, simply click the Done button after entering the name.

A new profile has been created, which is reported to us by the profile manager. Click on the new profile, then on the "Launch Firefox" button.

The new profile has been launched. However, each time you start the browser will ask you which of the current profiles to download. In order to always load the same profile, you need to check the box next to the item “Run the selected profile without prompting”.

Now the selected profile will always start. You can change it if you run the Mozilla Managers profile with the command firefox.exe -ProfileManager.

Are multiple people using the computer? Problems with the browser, but reinstalling it is undesirable? The program says that your profile could not be loaded? In all these cases, there is only one way out - to create a new Firefox profile without deleting the old one.

Today we will tell you how to do it and give a couple of tips.

How to create and download a new Firefox profile

First you need to find the program's shortcut. It can be located on the desktop, in the taskbar, or in the start menu. Open the properties of the shortcut, switch to the "Shortcut" tab and pay attention to the "Object" field there.

Here you must insert a space after the quotes, and after it add -p -no-remote as shown in the screenshot:

Thanks to this, every time you start Firefox, the profile manager will begin to appear. From it you can create a new one, select and load an existing one, and delete a profile if it is not needed. This is how the manager looks like for the author of this text, who works with several Firefox profiles at once:

Your original profile that you've been working with all this time is called default. Most likely, unlike the picture above, you will only have him in the list of available profiles. Without deleting it, you can create another completely clean Firefox profile. The "Create" button is located to the left of the list of profiles.

Creation is very fast. In the first window you will be told the theory:

A profile is where all of your data, additions, and changes you made to the original Firefox are stored. These are bookmarks, passwords, plugins, extensions, changed options and much more.

In the second window, you will be prompted to give the profile a name and choose where it will be stored:

One can agree with what is proposed without changing anything here. The existing "default" profile and the created "Default User" will be isolated from each other. Then just click the "Finish" button and your clean new profile will be ready:

Highlight it and click the Launch Firefox button to download a clean version of the browser. In this case, all your data will remain untouched and will be in the “default” profile, which you can also open using the same shortcut by selecting it in the profile manager.

By the way, if necessary, nothing prevents you from opening both of these profiles at the same time. You will get two Firefox windows, but not simple, but independent of each other. Each with its own settings and data. As a result, running multiple Firefox profiles is not difficult at all:

Where are Firefox profiles located

In the previous section, we explained what to do if Firefox won't start and gives you an error message stating that the profile could not be loaded (missing, not available, not found). As you understand, in this case, you just need to create a new clean profile. However, the question immediately arises about the former, because your, possibly valuable data, remained there.

The folder with the old profile could somehow be completely erased. If the profile is deleted - this is completely bad option. However, the situation can be a little more optimistic: for example, only some files were damaged. The folder, in turn, could not be deleted, but renamed or moved. Hence the profile error.

You should find the directory where Firefox stores profiles. Open the browser (since we have a new clean profile, it should now at least start), click on the main menu, go to the "help" section, find the item "information for solving problems" there:

Clicking on it will open new tab with various information about the browser, and at the bottom there will be a link button to the current profile folder:

After clicking on it, the explorer window will start, where all the information of your current profile will be displayed.

In order to see all available profiles, you need to go one level up to the Profiles folder (click on the button indicated by the arrow in the screenshot above). As a result, you will be taken to the directory where folders with Mozilla browser profiles are stored. Each folder here is a profile. We have seven of them, you are unlikely to have more than two:

The folders start with a random set of characters, but when the name ends, it's easy to identify them. The Default User is our blank profile (unless, of course, you chose a different name for it during the creation process in the previous section). But default, highlighted in the screenshot, is the original profile, in which something could be saved.

Transfer files between Firefox profiles

All profiles have identical files, by manually copying or moving them with replacement, you can move your data from one profile to another. Perhaps the most important are three types of data.

places.sqlite are your bookmarks. The history of visits is also stored here. Along with this file, you can also transfer favicons.sqlite - these are the icons of your bookmarks;
logins.json and key3.db are two critical file where Firefox saves your passwords. You just need to move them together. If you don't have any password saved, you won't see the logins.json file;
sessionstore.jsonlz4 - your tabs when you last left the browser. A few more sessions can be stored in the sessionstore-backups folder (these are files with .jsonlz4 permission, the one you need should be renamed to sessionstore and replace the base file with it).

Actually, for clarity, here are some of the files listed above in one of our test profiles:

Having made these replacements, you have a chance not only to reanimate Firefox new profile, but also transfer data from the old one to it. If you are an inexperienced user, we advise you to manually do somewhere backups everything that you will move and replace. Well, quite obvious advice: be guided by the size. The larger places.sqlite and sessionstore.jsonlz4, the more of your bookmarks and tabs they store.

Firefox profiles and versions

The new Firefox profile can help you out in many situations. For example, when serious problems arose with the browser, but, and even more so, reinstallation is undesirable.

Another obvious use case for Firefox profiles is using them to different versions browser. Let's say you are a web developer or just an enthusiast who uses a computer in addition to a stable versions of Firefox still obsolete, and also, on the contrary, new test versions:

For each of them, you can and should make a separate profile. Using one for all is a bad idea. Firstly, the icons on the browser toolbars will be shuffled after the launch of the old versions with the Australis interface and the new ones with the Photon interface. But these are trifles. But, secondly, downgrading is not recommended by Mozilla itself.

For example, if one profile has already loaded with a fresh test version, it is not recommended to run it on an older one. Especially if this is not a pure test profile, but your main one. Twice recently, in versions 55 and 58, Mozilla warned that it was making some changes that could cause profile incompatibilities.

As a result, it is better to create a separate profile for each version. For the program, by the way, creates it automatically. The rest you can do yourself:

It's very fast. The only inconvenience: each time you open any version of Firefox, you will have to manually select the desired profile from the list of available ones. This can be fixed by inserting in the properties of each shortcut the name of the profile that it should run by default:

For example, we did this for the beta version of Firefox, whose profile we simply call beta. The name is inserted between -p and -no remote without the leading hyphen and quotes.

This concludes our material. After reading it, you can easily create multiple profiles for one version of Firefox, or provide each version of Mozilla's browser with its own independent profile: