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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

OC by @novafunc@discuss.tchncs.de

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[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I know I'm a terminal type but why not just use a bash alias?

[-] esc@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago

Because not everyone wants to start browser from teminal? Like they said they want different pictograms for different profiles.

[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, that's probably a me thing, I like starting programs from the terminal. With a decent command runner doing a ctrl+r, ff<enter> (variants ffw or ffs for different profiles) is usually faster than reaching for a mouse. It's also faster than Meta, wait, "fire", wait again, <enter>.

I do get that most people don't use the terminal, although it's very nice, highly recommend.

@esc @olafurp
couldnt you create different dotdesktop files to make shortcuts for this then?

[-] esc@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago

wtdym? That's exactly what was done?

@esc lol sorry i completely misread the thread my bad. i do concur then carry on

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this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
62 points (94.3% liked)

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