Shortcut to a specific profile

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 01:03, 23 December 2007 by Alice Wyman (talk | contribs) (more fixes)
Jump to navigationJump to search

When multiple profiles exist for your Mozilla application, the last selected profile is automatically used unless you uncheck the "Don't ask at startup" option in the Profile Manager. If you don't wish to always see the Profile Manager at startup, you can use one of the methods given below to start with a specific profile. These instructions apply to Windows operating systems.

The profile must be listed in the Profile Manager and the profile folder must be in the same location as when the profile was originally created, for this to work.

Desktop shortcut

You can create a shortcut to a specific profile on the Windows desktop or other location by modifying the shortcut properties as follows, using Firefox as an example:

  1. Go to the Firefox installation directory (usually C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox), right-click the file "firefox.exe", and select the option "Create shortcut".
  2. Right-click and rename the new shortcut to whatever you like, then right-click the shortcut again and select "Properties".
  3. In the Shortcut tab window, place the cursor at the end of the path inside the Target box.
  4. Click once (so that the path is no longer highlighted) then add a space, -P, another space,then the name of the profile enclosed in quotes (the profile name is case-sensitive), like this:
    "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P "Profile Name"
  5. Click OK to exit the Properties window.
  6. Drag the new shortcut to the desktop or other location.

Run dialog

Using a Firefox profile named default as an example, click the Windows "Start" button, select "Run" and type the following in the "Open:" field, then click 'OK":

firefox.exe -P "default"

Note: On Windows Vista, you can press "Windows key+R" to open the "Run" box if you have not enabled the Run command on the Start menu (details here).

See also