You may soon display the Chrome profile manager on Start

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 3, 2021
Google Chrome
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Google Chrome users may display the profile manager of the web browser on start of the browser in the near future. Launched in Chrome Canary already, Chrome's new profile manager feature brings an option to the browser to pick one of the available profiles on start, or create a new one.

google chrome profiles

Profiles are not new in Chrome. Chrome users may click on the profile icon in the main toolbar of the browser to manage them. Profiles can be local or Google accounts, and certain data, such as passwords, bookmarks, themes, cookies, or the browsing history, are kept separately.

The feature serves two main purposes according to Google: to separate different accounts, e.g. work and home accounts, or when a single PC with a single account is used by multiple users.

When a Chrome user creates a new profile, an option to place a desktop shortcut is provided. A click on the desktop icon launches Chrome with the profile; the only other option provided in Stable versions of the web browser right now is to click on the profile icon to switch to another one during a browsing session.

Chrome opens the profile that was used the last time if the browser is opened directly.

The new profile selector and startup screen adds a third option to Chrome. How it works depends on the number of profiles. If a single profile is used, it won't be displayed during startup of the browser. Once a second profile has been added, it may be displayed during start of the browser to give users the option to pick the desired profile.

Select the profile icon and then the manage icon to display the Chrome profiles screen once the feature has landed. There you may check or uncheck the "show on startup" option, but only if at least two profiles exist.

Closing Words

Profiles offer a great way to separate different use cases, e.g. to keep work activity separate from non-work related browsing. Sharing a single account with different profiles on the other hand is not ideal, a better solution is to create accounts for each user on a device to better separate data, improve privacy and reduce confusion and potential issues with launching the wrong profiles.

Now You: do you use profiles in your browser of choice?

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You may soon display the Chrome profile manager on Start
Article Name
You may soon display the Chrome profile manager on Start
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Google Chrome users may display the profile manager of the web browser on start of the browser in the near future.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on February 10, 2023 at 6:08 pm
    Reply

    Chrome profile manager i turned it off by accident can some one here help me?

  2. Jara said on April 5, 2022 at 5:47 pm
    Reply

    Chrome is such trash for us teachers!

  3. JustJ said on July 27, 2021 at 10:20 am
    Reply

    Does anyone know if the user can find their bookmarks, once this version installs itself?

    Seems that a user that never signed in with an account then loses all bookmarks and they cannot be found in %appdata% ‘general chrome locations’ anywhere

  4. Anonymous said on March 5, 2021 at 12:56 pm
    Reply

    Iron Heart will be happy. He can now control his hundreds and hundreds of profiles a little better

    1. pirate_pete said on March 8, 2021 at 5:57 am
      Reply

      holy fuck, that’s tragic

    2. woger said on March 6, 2021 at 12:40 am
      Reply

      > He can now control his hundreds and hundreds of profiles a little better

      How sad is that? Just use Firefox with FPI, or the new dFPI. Full network and state partitioning. Nothing else comes close. Even Tor Browser use FPI

      https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-protection/
      https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/02/introducing-state-partitioning/

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