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Can I tweak a Firefox.app to launch with a specific profile?

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  • Last reply by hnrk242

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I have read http://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-os-x/ and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Multiple_Firefox_Profiles#Using_the_profiles, but neither answers my question:

I'm on MacOSX, and I have two Firefoxes in my /Application folder: Firefox.app (version 25) and one I have renamed to FirefoxLatest.app (currently version 27). I need Firefox.app to stay on version 25 because of stuff™ in my development environment.

I want Firefox.app to start with the "lite" profile, and FirefoxLatest.app to start with the "default" profile. Is it possible to add/change something in e.g. Info.plist or application.ini in these app folders so that these apps start with the wanted profile?

Using profile_manager won't work in this case.

I have read http://spf13.com/post/managing-multiple-firefox-profiles-in-os-x/ and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Multiple_Firefox_Profiles#Using_the_profiles, but neither answers my question: I'm on MacOSX, and I have two Firefoxes in my /Application folder: Firefox.app (version 25) and one I have renamed to FirefoxLatest.app (currently version 27). I need Firefox.app to stay on version 25 because of stuff™ in my development environment. I want Firefox.app to start with the "lite" profile, and FirefoxLatest.app to start with the "default" profile. Is it possible to add/change something in e.g. Info.plist or application.ini in these app folders so that these apps start with the wanted profile? Using profile_manager won't work in this case.

Chosen solution

Hello Hnrk242,

Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support. You should be able to use the script creation guide in the first link you posted to do what you're trying to accomplish.

The two scripts should call:

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -p lite

and:

/Applications/FirefoxLatest.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin

Please let us know if this answers your question.

Cheers, Patrick

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Chosen Solution

Hello Hnrk242,

Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support. You should be able to use the script creation guide in the first link you posted to do what you're trying to accomplish.

The two scripts should call:

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -p lite

and:

/Applications/FirefoxLatest.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin

Please let us know if this answers your question.

Cheers, Patrick

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It's explicitly not how I wanted to solve this, but I'll settle for the script solution since that seems the only way :)