1

Is it possible to have two icons for Firefox in the dock (the app list at the bottom of the screen)? I'd like to have one icon to start one profile (say, "dad's Firefox profile") and another (possibly with another icon?) to start mum's profile.

I've read how to do it from the command line, but that's not exactly elegant...

This works:

open -n ./Firefox.app --args -profilemanager

but I would rather call these from a GUI icon:

open -n ./Firefox.app --args -P "mum's profile"

and:

open -n ./Firefox.app --args -P "dad's profile"

Surely, it's not really this complicated?

noughtnaut
  • 113

1 Answers1

2

If you are really having different users for each profile e.g. mum and dad then I would note that the two users would not be using the screen at the same time. The easiest way to do this is to create different macOS users for each person and then use Fast User Switching to switch between them. Unix has been a multi-user system for 40 years and so its tools are all designed around having different users at the OS level and not the application level.

At one stage I did use an app that managed Firefox profiles and launched them but I can't find it now and it might only be 32-bit.

The rest of this answer is mainly a link answer as I have not tried it.

However, you should be able to do what you want using Automator which is part of macOS.

Run multiple Firefox profiles as separate Applications purports to show how to do this.

The steps seem to be:

  1. Create the profiles from the command line using Firefox.
  2. Create an Automator script to wrap the command lines as you show but use Firefox's path rather than open
  3. Change the application icon.
agarza
  • 2,274
mmmmmm
  • 30,160
  • 1
    I'd agree that separate user accounts is a much better idea -- think of it as a "profile", but not just for Firefox, but everything that each person does. – benwiggy Nov 02 '23 at 11:18
  • Thank you for the "however" part, as I do in fact want to have sessions from both open on screen at the same time. I know it's not "complete separation", and in this case that is a desired feature. – noughtnaut Nov 02 '23 at 17:23
  • I just follow the guide you linked, and it's true that it's not a perfect solution but it is certainly good enough. Thank you!\ – noughtnaut Nov 02 '23 at 17:59