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Firefox no longer supports -p option for starting profiles

Colonel Coder
Colonel Coder
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I have been using the -p option to create and start Firefox profiles for years. This used to allow me to run multiple Firefox windows with different profiles using bash scripts that were all symlinks to the same file. Today I find that if I want to use multiple profiles simultaneously, I have to 1. Use about:profiles to get the profile manager 2. Find the profile I need 3. Click a button to start a new window with the profile I need. Compared to running a bash script, this takes a lot more time. I don't see a good reason for trading the command line option for this new system. After reading the documented command line options at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options it appears that I'm supposed to use "-new-instance". However, I never had to do that before the most recent update. After some experimentation, It appears that "-new-instance" is ignored. After looking around, it appears that the latest Firefox update broke "-p" on macOS. A workaround is to use "-no-remote -P", but I'm left wondering why the need to break something that has worked for many years.

I have been using the -p option to create and start Firefox profiles for years. This used to allow me to run multiple Firefox windows with different profiles using bash scripts that were all symlinks to the same file. Today I find that if I want to use multiple profiles simultaneously, I have to 1. Use about:profiles to get the profile manager 2. Find the profile I need 3. Click a button to start a new window with the profile I need. Compared to running a bash script, this takes a lot more time. I don't see a good reason for trading the command line option for this new system. After reading the documented command line options at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options it appears that I'm supposed to use "-new-instance". However, I never had to do that before the most recent update. After some experimentation, It appears that "-new-instance" is ignored. After looking around, it appears that the latest Firefox update broke "-p" on macOS. A workaround is to use "-no-remote -P", but I'm left wondering why the need to break something that has worked for many years.

Modified by Colonel Coder

All Replies (2)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Hi Colonel Coder, were you calling up the "external" profile manager with -p? Do either of these do what -p used to do?

  • -P (capital P instead of lower case p)
  • -ProfileManager

(For what it's worth, on Windows -no-profile was required to launch a second profile since as far back as I can remember.)

Colonel Coder
Colonel Coder Question owner
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No, I tried both of those. Without "-no-remote", everything I do opens a new browser window of the default profile. So something that has worked for at least 5 years stopped working today. Also, the documentation does not match the behavior. FWIW, I used to use desktop shortcuts on Windows to do something similar, but it's been so long since I used Windows, I don't remember if I had to use "-no-profile". At any rate, the macOS behavior has changed for no obvious reason.