Using a dedicated profile for Firefox Nightly

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  • Revision id: 143543
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  • Creator: AliceWyman
  • Comment: added step to clear the "Use the selected profile without asking at startup" box
  • Reviewed: Yes
  • Reviewed:
  • Reviewed by: AliceWyman
  • Is approved? Yes
  • Is current revision? No
  • Ready for localization: No
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If you frequently switch between your normal version of Firefox and Nightly, you may experience profile corruption issues when browsing certain websites. A simple solution would be to have dedicated profiles for each of these channels. This article explains how to do this.

  • If you don't have Nightly installed on your computer: Download the installer for your language and system from the Firefox Nightly download page. You should wait until after you have created a dedicated profile before you launch Nightly.
Note: You cannot create or manage profiles while Firefox is running. You should first quit all running instances of Firefox, Beta, Firefox Developer Edition or Nightly. Then follow the instructions below, applicable to your operating system.

The following steps are for Firefox Nightly but you can use the same procedure to create dedicated profiles for other versions of Firefox.

Windows

  1. Press Windows Key+R on the keyboard. A Run dialog will open.
  2. Enter firefox -ProfileManager and click OK. The Profile Manager (Choose User Profile) window will open.
  3. Select Create profile..., name it Nightly and click Finish.
  4. Clear the Use the selected profile without asking at startup checkbox. This will cause the Profile Manager to appear at startup, unless you use a custom shortcut to start Firefox with a specific profile.
  5. Click Exit to close the Profile Manager.
  6. You can now update the shortcut you use to start Nightly, so that it automatically opens with your new Nightly profile:
    • Right-click the Nightly icon on your desktop and select Properties.
    • Update the Target field by adding a space, then -P Nightly after the path to the Firefox Nightly executable, which in most cases, would be as follows:
      "C:\Program Files\Nightly\firefox.exe" -P Nightly

Mac

  1. Open the Terminal application.
  2. Type or paste in the path to Firefox, followed by .app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager. For example, if Firefox is installed in the recommended location, you would enter /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager.
  3. Select Create profile..., name it Nightly and click Done.
  4. Clear the Use the selected profile without asking at startup checkbox. This will cause the Profile Manager to appear at startup, unless you start Firefox with a custom launcher.
  5. Click Exit to close the Profile Manager.
You can find a useful tutorial to set up custom launchers here: Managing Multiple Firefox Profiles in OSX. It's best to follow all steps in the "Creating the scripts" section, including the "edit Info.plist" step. Also, you'll want to change the path in the do shell script to point to the correct .app file for the Firefox channel you want to target.

Linux

  1. Open the Terminal application.
  2. Enter firefox -ProfileManager.
  3. Select Create profile..., name it Nightly and click Finish.
  4. Clear the Use the selected profile without asking at startup checkbox. This will cause the Profile Manager to appear at startup, unless you start Firefox with a custom launcher.
  5. Click Exit to close the Profile Manager.
  6. If you want individual icons to launch specific profiles, you will need to set the command line for your new launcher. To do this, set the command text field to target the executable file, likely /usr/bin/firefox, and add the -P PROFILE_NAME parameter, replacing PROFILE_NAME with the specific profile.

You can now start using Nightly safely with its own dedicated profile. If you are a Sync user, Sync will keep the profiles up to date as normal.