Avatar for Username

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

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

How do I uncheck the box that has firefox automatically start up without showing the profile manager even though I specify -p on the command line?

  • 2 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 79 views
  • Last reply by myob76

myob76
myob76
more options

I specify in my firefox shortcut that I want firefox to open the profile manager and allow me to choose which profile to use. My family shares a single windows login, and we just want to open firefox and allow us to choose our own profile.

This works, except there is an annoying checkbox on the profile manager window that if checked, prevents the profile manager profile selection dialog box from ever appearing again even though -p is explicitly given on the command line. The only way I can recover when someone accidentally clicks this checkbox before clicking OK ( which happens about once a month ) is to delete all profiles and start again letting firefox sync put most of it back,

It would be nice if that option were not even presented if -p is specified on the command line since -p means you DO want the profile manager dialog to appear. Barring that, is there any way short of deleting all profiles to get the profile manager dialog to appear once someone accidentally clicks that button?

I specify in my firefox shortcut that I want firefox to open the profile manager and allow me to choose which profile to use. My family shares a single windows login, and we just want to open firefox and allow us to choose our own profile. This works, except there is an annoying checkbox on the profile manager window that if checked, prevents the profile manager profile selection dialog box from ever appearing again even though -p is explicitly given on the command line. The only way I can recover when someone accidentally clicks this checkbox before clicking OK ( which happens about once a month ) is to delete all profiles and start again letting firefox sync put most of it back, It would be nice if that option were not even presented if -p is specified on the command line since -p means you DO want the profile manager dialog to appear. Barring that, is there any way short of deleting all profiles to get the profile manager dialog to appear once someone accidentally clicks that button?

Chosen solution

Upon further messing around, I figured an easier recovery method

In your profiles directory, there's a profiles.ini file. When you click the don't show profile manager checkbox firefox apparently edits this file to have the line

StartWithLastProfile=1

change this to

StartWithLastProfile=0

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (2)

the-edmeister
the-edmeister
  • Moderator
more options

"Nice" or not, the Profile Manager isn't intended for the 'average' user. Individual Windows Logon User accounts should be used for that purpose, rather than relying upon each user to select their Profile.

Why don't you use individual desktop shortcuts for each person? Thus by-passing the Profile Manager UI and launching each Profile from command line. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options#-P_.22profile_name.22

Just add -P "Joel User" to the desktop shortcut Target line. Where "Joel User" is the "name" of that Profile. Quotes are needed when there's a space in the user name.

Or -P Joel_User when there's no space.

myob76
myob76 Question owner
more options

Chosen Solution

Upon further messing around, I figured an easier recovery method

In your profiles directory, there's a profiles.ini file. When you click the don't show profile manager checkbox firefox apparently edits this file to have the line

StartWithLastProfile=1

change this to

StartWithLastProfile=0