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how to run firefox stable and beta side by side on macOS?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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since v67 firefox uses separate profiles for stable, beta and nightly builds. that's a huge step in the right direction. running versions side-by-side was mentioned in a nightly blog post: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2019/01/14/moving-to-a-profile-per-install-architecture/ KB-document: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dedicated-profiles-firefox-installation

But how would I run stable and beta side-by-side?

Problems I am facing:

- both stable and beta released versions are called "Firefox.app" on macOS. So I can't have both in the programs folder

- If I rename Firefox.app (beta) to Firefox_beta.app macOS complains that signatures for that app are invalid (which is expected, so that's not a solution)

It would be awesome to run those versions in parallel. But how would that be done?

since v67 firefox uses separate profiles for stable, beta and nightly builds. that's a huge step in the right direction. running versions side-by-side was mentioned in a nightly blog post: https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2019/01/14/moving-to-a-profile-per-install-architecture/ KB-document: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dedicated-profiles-firefox-installation But how would I run stable and beta side-by-side? Problems I am facing: - both stable and beta released versions are called "Firefox.app" on macOS. So I can't have both in the programs folder - If I rename Firefox.app (beta) to Firefox_beta.app macOS complains that signatures for that app are invalid (which is expected, so that's not a solution) It would be awesome to run those versions in parallel. But how would that be done?

Modified by trying...

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
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Installing multiple versions on Mac OS X is basically dragging the Firefox application out of the DMG file to the desktop and rename the folder. You can drag the renamed Firefox application folder to the Applications folder like you would normally install Firefox.

You need to use the terminal to create a new profile for each version (command line flag -P).

Firefox also comes with the about:profiles page that has a button to create a new profile. Make sure that no profile is selected as Default=1 to make the Profile Manager show when you start Firefox. You can check that in the profiles.ini file.