Multiple Profile support in Chrome

[ghost]

Had a look at the new release and it looks real nice! Was wondering if there's any chance of support for multiple Chrome profiles in future versionsa?

[mortenn]

I don't tend to use chrome, so I am not familiar with such a feature. If you can provide information about how it works, or even a PR, I would be happy to add support. Alternatively, you could simply add the profiles manually from the browser configuration window, I suppose.

This issue is kind of related to issue #2 - not sure how to represent either in the UI, as some users might end up with a really long list if both of these are implemented and default enabled :)

[WizX20]

Profile switching has also been available on Edge Chromium since 2020 if I'm correct, see Using multiple profiles at work and at home is now easier with Microsoft Edge.

I'm was not sure if there were any big differences between chrome and edge implementation-wise, there do not seem to be. I searched a bit and came across this repo: EDGEProfiles. Which contains a powershell with some hints of where to the profiles live in the registry etc. That plus some additional search gave me the following:

• Edge Chromium

  • Reg: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Edge\PreferenceMACs and Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Edge\Profiles (this last one might only be created when you actually have configured multiple profiles, not sure)
  • Folder: C:\Users\[[USER]]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\[[PROFILE]] (default profile is named Default)
  • Browser info (profile path key): edge://version/
  • Command line: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 1" --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end --site-per-process

• Google Chrome

  • Reg: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Google\Chrome\PreferenceMACs
  • Folder: C:\Users\[[USER]]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\[[PROFILE]] (default profile is named Default)
  • Browser info (profile path key): chrome://version/
  • Command line: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 1" --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end

By the looks of it, if BrowserPicker would allow us to add the same browser multiple times, with arguments, where you can enter the profile.... would be a minimal working version?

[mortenn]

Indeed that would work, hopefully can get around to building some first party support in though, the user experience of setting them up by hand as separate browsers isn't the best thing ever :)

As for the UI, it might get a bit busy if all of a sudden a lot of containers start popping up as options, so might want to be watchful of that.

I have some ideas;

• If more than 2 containers, show the two most used, with a button to show all
• Show a button similar to the privacy mode for selecting containers
• Option to hide containers, but still be able to assign them to url patterns in the configuration
• Add an option to disable container support (maybe ask the user on first time startup with detected containers?)

Hopefully I can find some time to work on this again soon, but in the meantime, PRs are most welcome :)

[aloneguid]

Looks like every browser, even Chromium based, does it slightly different. Firefox based browsers do it even more different. Look at Browser Tamer implementation, it autodetects profiles for most browsers: https://www.aloneguid.uk/projects/bt/

[tdalon]

This is the feature I strongly miss in BrowserPicker. The workaround to manually add a browser with command argument for the profile we want to use is not very user friendly. Have a look at BrowserSelect how it can be implemented.

I don't think users have that many different profiles and if so they certainly rather want to be able to select them. I would most use BrowserPicker with different profiles for the url<->browser (profiles) mapping configuration i.e. wouldn't need to have the profiles displayed when opening with the UI but it wouldn't bother me though to have all the profiles displayed when opening.