Firefox Profiles

Today I learned that Firefox has profiles for profiles. Why would I need profiles withing my profiles? Yeah, its seems redundant but it is very useful. One can separate profiles dedicated for user’s context (e.g. work and personal) and the ones for other users(e.g. family and what not). This means that labeling profiles is easier and they are not on each other way(being on the same list). Now, that is not too impressive but the neat thing is that one can set rules for these groups of profiles, making the tedious task of configuring each profile manually much easier.

I can set some rules that favor convenience over privacy for my family group. For example, Librewolf erases browsing and download history by default, but with two simple rules I could re-enable history for the family group. So I create a group named family in Librewolf’s profile manager with librewolf --ProfileManager, and set it to launch on default.

Then in .librewolf/<random-string>.family/ I insert in user.js:

user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.history", false);
user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.downloads", false);

Then I can launch Librewolf using the default profile for me with librewolf -P default-default and set a keybind shortcut for convenience. Also set some rules for myself that my family probably wouldn’t want:

user_pref("sidebar.verticalTabs", true);
user_pref("apz.gtk.kinetic_scroll.enabled", false);

To apply rules to all profiles then librewolf.overrides.cfg can be used inside .librewolf. One could set default behaviour for new tabs, translations and more:

defaultPref("network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy", 2);
defaultPref("browser.startup.homepage", "chrome://browser/content/blanktab.html");
defaultPref("browser.search.separatePrivateDefault", false);
defaultPref("browser.translations.neverTranslateLanguages", "es");
defaultPref("browser.profiles.enabled", true);
defaultPref("browser.policies.runOncePerModification.setDefaultSearchEngine", "StartPage");

//
// Fucking Machine Learning
//

// Hide from UI
defaultPref("browser.ml.chat.hideFromLabs", true);
defaultPref("browser.ml.chat.hideLabsShortcuts", true);

// Clear default providers
defaultPref("browser.ml.chat.providers", "");

// Overwrite potential firefox changes
defaultPref("browser.ml.chat.provider", "");
defaultPref("browser.ml.chat.enabled", false);
defaultPref("browser.ml.chat.sidebar", false);
defaultPref("browser.ml.enabled", false);
defaultPref("browser.ml.chat.openSidebarOnProviderChange", false);

Now lending my computer for browser is no longer a hassle.