62
Here's an easy way to handle multiple Firefox profiles on Linux
(literature.cafe)
On my system, I wanted Firefox profiles to feel like their own browser instances. Meaning, their own app icons and to not be grouped together. Almost like how it is on MacOS.
To do this, I had to make multiple .desktop files. Here are the contents of that file. This targets flatpak, but it should work for traditional Firefox installs too.
I called this profile "Personal". Note that this says
--profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal". In this, "personal" is a symlink to the real profile folder name located in the same directory.[Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Type=Application Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run >--env=MOZ_APP_REMOTINGNAME=Personal >--branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=firefox >--file-forwarding org.mozilla.firefox --profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal" --name org.mozilla.firefox.Personal >--class org.mozilla.firefox.Personal @@u %u @@ Terminal=false X-MultipleArgs=false Icon=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/icons/firefox-heart.png StartupWMClass=org.mozilla.firefox.Personal DBusActivatable=false Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser; MimeType=application/json;application/pdf;application/rdf+xml;application/rss+xml;application/x-xpinstall;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;audio/flac;audio/ogg;audio/webm;image/avif;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;image/svg+xml;image/webp;text/html;text/xml;video/ogg;video/webm;x-scheme-handler/chrome;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/mailto; StartupNotify=true Actions=new-window;new-private-window; Name=Firefox (Personal) Comment=Fast and private browser GenericName=Web Browser Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer; X-GNOME-FullName=Mozilla Firefox [Desktop Action new-window] Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run >--env=MOZ_APP_REMOTINGNAME=Personal >--branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=firefox >--file-forwarding org.mozilla.firefox --profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal" --name org.mozilla.firefox.Personal >--class org.mozilla.firefox.Personal --new-window @@u %u @@ Name=New Window [Desktop Action new-private-window] Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run >--env=MOZ_APP_REMOTINGNAME=Personal >--branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=firefox >--file-forwarding org.mozilla.firefox --profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal" --name org.mozilla.firefox.Personal --class org.mozilla.firefox.Personal --private-window @@u %u @@ Name=New Private Window
Yes, I second that! I use desktop Linux on and off for like 20 years, with more like on 10 years now, and to my shame, it was about a month or two ago (well, half a year maybe, time flies!) I learned about desktop files. They are so good, I use them for everything now (via application launcher, I use fuzzel). I automated quite a lot with a combination of a simple bash script plus a desktop file to run it. Wish I learned that years ago!