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Comment by PearlRiver

1 hour ago

This is why I have two separate browsers. If you want to do official stuff like paying for things you need to get through cloudflare.

6 comments

PearlRiver

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notafox  19 minutes ago

You can use Firefox with different profiles and configure it to launch particular profile directly, without launching default profile and using about:profiles.

Firefox with a non-default profile can be created like that:

  ./firefox -CreateProfile "profile-name /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/profile-dir/"
  # For, say, cloudflare that would be:
  ./firefox -CreateProfile "cloudflare /home/user/.mozilla/firefox/cloudflare/"

And you can launch it like that:

  ./firefox -profile "/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/profile-dir/"
  # For cloudflare that would be:
  ./firefox -profile "/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/cloudflare/"

So, given that /usr/bin/firefox is just a shell script, you can

    - create a copy of it, say, /usr/bin/firefox-cloudflare
    - adjust the relevant line, adding the -profile argument

If you use an icon to run firefox (say, /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop), you'll need to do copy/adjust line for the icon.

Of course, "./firefox" from examples above should be replaced with the actual path to executable. For default installation of Firefox the path would be in /usr/bin/firefox script.

So, you can have a separate profiles for something sensitive/invasive (linkedin, cloudflare, shops, banks, etc.) and then you can have a separate profile for everything else.

And each profile can have its own set of extensions.

helterskelter  1 hour ago

Firefox added profile switching recently. Works good.

(That said, I still keep separate machines. One for doing "official" things, the other for everything else)

  • notafox  17 minutes ago

    > Firefox added profile switching recently.

    I think this was as recent as 25 years ago?

    Recently they added some new UI. There was and still is (I think) classic Profile Manager UI, which you can launch with

      ./firefox -ProfileManager

    or access UI in about:profiles.

    But you don't have to use any of those anyway - see my comment above (a response to parent).

  • ajb  38 minutes ago

    Odd - they've had that for years, but only on the command line. Wonder if it's different under the hood? They also have firefox containers which also never quite became a first-class feature (you have to install a plugin).