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How to keep profiles on the same account separate

agustinmarcelodominguez
agustinmarcelodominguez
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I'm trying to setup different profiles for simultaneous use (Work, Personal, Study, etc) on the same Firefox Account since I want to take advantage of the sync feature for Linux/Windows dual boot.

But I am having an issue where opening a different profile where one is already open 'bleeds', or merges, their bookmarks and themes (and probably other stuff but those are the immediately visible). The bookmarks I save in one appear in the other

I read these related issues:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1184891 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1262935

and added the -no-remote flag, and indeed I get a dialogue screen to select the profile I want, but this merge keeps happening and I don't know why.

The console command I use to launch firefox is

nohup firefox -no-remote > /dev/null 2>&1 &1>/dev/null &'

and all my profile directories are located in: root directory: `/home/user/.cache/mozilla/firefox/` local directory: `/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/` in different directories with their own names.

What I am looking for, is being able to open different instances of the browser with different profiles simultaneously, and each of them having their own bookmarks/history/etc, while also syncing those so when I change the boot to Windows.

I am trying this on Linux (Lubuntu) Any help will be appreciated.

I'm trying to setup different profiles for simultaneous use (Work, Personal, Study, etc) on the same Firefox Account since I want to take advantage of the sync feature for Linux/Windows dual boot. But I am having an issue where opening a different profile where one is already open 'bleeds', or merges, their bookmarks and themes (and probably other stuff but those are the immediately visible). The bookmarks I save in one appear in the other I read these related issues: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1184891 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1262935 and added the -no-remote flag, and indeed I get a dialogue screen to select the profile I want, but this merge keeps happening and I don't know why. The console command I use to launch firefox is '''nohup firefox -no-remote > /dev/null 2>&1 &1>/dev/null &'''' and all my profile directories are located in: root directory: `/home/user/.cache/mozilla/firefox/` local directory: `/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/` in different directories with their own names. What I am looking for, is being able to open different instances of the browser with different profiles simultaneously, and each of them having their own bookmarks/history/etc, while also syncing those so when I change the boot to Windows. I am trying this on Linux (Lubuntu) Any help will be appreciated.

All Replies (3)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
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Sorry, Sync doesn't let you include/exclude specific profiles/devices. Since you want to use Sync for your cross-OS sharing, I think you would need to create different Firefox Accounts for each profile pair (work-work, personal-personal, study-study). There are free email addresses available from many providers, so that isn't a limitation, but the overhead of keeping track of more accounts certainly is a burden.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Using Sync means that personal data from each profile you connect to a specific account is uploaded to the Sync server and merged to all other devices. There is no way to keep data separate other than using separate Sync accounts or only syncing data that you want to see on all devices (i.e. don't sync the bookmarks).

agustinmarcelodominguez
agustinmarcelodominguez Question owner
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jscher2000 said
Sorry, Sync doesn't let you include/exclude specific profiles/devices. Since you want to use Sync for your cross-OS sharing, I think you would need to create different Firefox Accounts for each profile pair (work-work, personal-personal, study-study). There are free email addresses available from many providers, so that isn't a limitation, but the overhead of keeping track of more accounts certainly is a burden.

cor-el said
Using Sync means that personal data from each profile you connect to a specific account is uploaded to the Sync server and merged to all other devices. There is no way to keep data separate other than using separate Sync accounts or only syncing data that you want to see on all devices (i.e. don't sync the bookmarks).


I want to sync between devices and OS-es. What I don't want and what is happening right now is that changes I make to one profile get replicated and saved on the others, as if they weren't separate.