It's rather easy to set up totally separate browser profiles to segment bookmarks, preferences and saved sessions; as if you have completely separate browsers.
They use the same "executable," but can be run at the same time. Useful for shared computers or if you want a VPN profile, shopping or a browsing profile, independent of each other's clutter.
These steps would be similar for a Windows install, the paths would simply differ.
In my example, I created a browsing profile.
Go to about:profiles
and create a new profile > a wizard will launch
If you want to copy bookmarks from another Firefox install, the path is as follows:
/home/yourusername/.mozilla/firefox/[profile id].default/bookmarkbackups
Simply drag bookmarkbackups into your new profile, at: /home/yourusername/.mozilla/firefox/[profile id].browsing/bookmarkbackups
(note the .browsing in the profile path -- that's my new profile)
Only copy the extensions from the same browser instance/directory.
Copy the following folders and their content from your .default profile:
/home/yourusername/.mozilla/firefox/[profile id].default/extension-data
/home/yourusername/.mozilla/firefox/[profile id].default/extensions
to:
/home/yourusername/.mozilla/firefox/[profile id].browsing/extension-data
/home/yourusername/.mozilla/firefox/[profile id].browsing/extensions
On first load, it will take a moment for them to appear in the Add-Ons dashboard.
That's it.
Head to ~/.local/share/applications
and create firefox-esr-browsing.desktop
Append the following:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Firefox Browsing Profile
GenericName=Web Browser
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
Icon=firefox-trunk
Exec=/usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr %u -P browsing
NoDisplay=false
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-schem$
StartupWMClass=Firefox-esr
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
The important part is the Exec line, which specifies the -P
(profile) flag with my profile name that I want to launch when this shortcut is clicked.
You can optionally use the "Menu Editor" application, too, to create this launcher and change the icon.
Note that I have two entries for Firefox, one is the Browsing shortcut I just created as firefox-esr-browsing.desktop