Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How to pass a url to firefox while bypassing profile manager

more options

I use a few different profiles and set the Profile Manager to come up on every program startup. So if an external application tries to send a url to the default browser, it will bring PM, and try to open a second instance of the selected profile. Usually that prof. would already be opened, so it won't open the new url. So I would like to have local web links sent to firefox bypassing the profile manager. I thought of a few possible solutions, but don't know how to implement any of them:

create a custom executable modified like the command line arguments "-P "default"". set it as the default browser.

create a shortcut with the same arguments (picking a profile) and a variable for urls. set a shortcut as a default app?

find an argument that opens a new window in the active instance/profile and a url variable

any idea?

I use a few different profiles and set the Profile Manager to come up on every program startup. So if an external application tries to send a url to the default browser, it will bring PM, and try to open a second instance of the selected profile. Usually that prof. would already be opened, so it won't open the new url. So I would like to have local web links sent to firefox bypassing the profile manager. I thought of a few possible solutions, but don't know how to implement any of them: create a custom executable modified like the command line arguments "-P "default"". set it as the default browser. create a shortcut with the same arguments (picking a profile) and a variable for urls. set a shortcut as a default app? find an argument that opens a new window in the active instance/profile and a url variable any idea?

All Replies (1)

more options

An external application sending a URL to Firefox only works with the Default Browser in Windows set as Firefox, which will then use the Default =1 Profile as listed in the profiles.ini file. Trying to open the Profile Manager and then selecting a Profile doesn't work with an external application. It works best (/only?) by going thru the Profile Manager feature, without using the PM interface.

If the Default profile is already running, a new window should open with the "sent" URL.

And if you have another Profile running, you're not going to get the Default to open; it will tell you "Firefox is already running".

It is possible to open a Profile when another is already running, by using the -no -remote command, but that command line parameter won't work with the Default browser / Default Profile combo.

I might have a "solution" if I knew why you are using multiple Profiles.

If are interested in learning "how" to deal with running multiple Profiles, see this: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2821799 And at the bottom of that article are links to 4 previous version of that article. Keep in mind that all 5 of those articles were written from a different perspective than what you are asking about; multiple different Firefox installations, with multiple different Profiles, to allow a person to use Firefox Release smoothly, while "testing" the pre-release versions that will become a Firefox Release in the near future.

You'll need to "pick out" what applies to what you want to do when reading those postings, and forget about the multiple different Firefox versions. The "drill" as it pertains to Default / Default is basically the same, regardless of how many "Firefox" program installations you have.