Firefox Community Forum

I'm trying to understand Profiles, especially since I am transitioning to a new laptop.

On my older machine, I have an Original Profile. Since I've never specifically created a profile, I assume that Original Profile contains my current Settings, Bookmarks, etc. Is that a correct assumption?

My new machine also has an Original Profile. Do I need to copy my Original Profile from my older machine to the newer machine? Should I rename the profile on the new machine or leave it as Original Profile?

opened firefox saturday and screen was totally different than what i had. guess it updated, but not returned to my profile. have tried to open my profile and succeeded, but can't get it to come on automatically when i open firefox again. how do i open the profile i want and then keep it opened?

Just this week firefox has been demanding that I choose a profile before I gain access. Can I skip this step? And how can I change the unpleasant blob that I must choose. I have got one answer which requests a screen shot but I can't find my question to attach it. (I can't find the old search questions--but I'm most elderly.) and need links or reminders. Anyway, I'll put the screen shot here.

I have 3 different profiles on my Desktop Firefox, and I'm able to change between them and even set some commands on CLI to switch between them easily, opening one or another.

Now, my question is: How can I do such a thing on mobile? I only linked my main account, and as far as I understood, I cannot link to multiple and switch on demand. Is there any way? Am I missing something?

I checked the tutorial on how to setup profiles and the profile manager doesn't seem to exist on mobile.

Thank you for your attention!

Just lately, Firefox has been going on about Profiles, I don't know why. I have no need for such things, yet in my Windows menu, everything says "– Original profile" at the end. All this does is make things difficult to see. How can I get rid of it, please?

It induced me to create a new profile. Then, I lost the old one. Who even knew about profiles? Firefox is now filling in passwords, among other serious setting changes I did not make. This is the worst experience I ever had with a browser. Firefox has been my steady for decades, always dependable and easy to manage. I think we broke up today.

Good day,

I'd like to start by thanking the Mozilla Firefox dev team for the newest iteration of the profiles feature. I think it's great.

One area where I think it could use improvement from usability perspective is a way to launch a specific profile via the right-click menu when using the taskbar icon. Currently, using the "Choose a profile when Firefox opens" only gives users the option to select the profile on the initial launch of Firefox. After that if the user opens a new window via the taskbar, the most recently opened profile is automatically chosen.

I managed to find a "hack" to add the requested capability. It seems adding an action to the "firefox.desktop" file in the "/usr/share/applications/" directory works the way I'd like it to.

Modifications to "firefox.desktop" Changed line 12 to: Actions=choose-profile;new-window;new-private-window;open-profile-manager; Added lines 529 - 534 (before Desktop Action new-window): [Desktop Action choose-profile] Exec=firefox --new-instance Name=Choose Profile Name[en_US]=Choose Profile Name[en_CA]=Choose Profile Name[en_GB]=Choose Profile

The end result is a new option available when right clicking the taskbar that opens the new profile selector. Screencaps of options before and after attached. I imagine that users will need to have the "Choose a profile when Firefox opens" enabled for this to work as expected, but would like someone from Mozilla to confirm this.

Would like to request that this option be built into Firefox going forward, so there's no need for users to "tweak" it to get this functionality.

I want to keep the original profile but the process is confusing to me. Can you tell me a simple way to keep the original profile or else set the original for me.

Thanks

Boyd Proctor

I am running macos 15.7.2.

Bought a faster external drive *named EXT3* and I copied my Firefox Profiles from EXT2 *previous External* to EXT3

I have added the location for the profile in /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles.ini

So far so good, but when EXT2 is NOT mounted the profile won't start, but only when EXT2 is MOUNTED then the profile will start.

Also connectivity is broken then, with that I mean I can't open any sites, not even a local one.

When I look in About:profiles I see that the profile in EXT3 is active and in use.

Any idea what is going on?

Ps:

macos: 15.7.2 Firefox Version:140.5.0 ESR

I already signed in with my account, but it still pop up this:"

fire fox keep pop me this: This profile was last used with a newer version of this application. Please create a new profile.

At some point recently, a 'Profiles tab has appeared in my menu bar. Presumably this arrived during an update. I don't want it, keep accidentally clicking on it instead of bookmarks & want it gone. How do I remove it?

I don't have a Profiles menu under the Account button on the main toolbar. My Firefox was just updated and the update tab info talked about the new profiles feature as if it was available. Is this rolling out in phases or should I be seeing it?

I have version 144.0, updated on 10/14/2025.

Thanks.