On my system, I wanted Firefox profiles to feel like their own browser instances. Meaning, their own app icons and to not be grouped together. Almost like how it is on MacOS.

To do this, I had to make multiple .desktop files. Here are the contents of that file. This targets flatpak, but it should work for traditional Firefox installs too.

I called this profile “Personal”. Note that this says --profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal". In this, “personal” is a symlink to the real profile folder name located in the same directory.

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run >--env=MOZ_APP_REMOTINGNAME=Personal >--branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=firefox >--file-forwarding org.mozilla.firefox --profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal" --name org.mozilla.firefox.Personal >--class org.mozilla.firefox.Personal @@u %u @@
Terminal=false
X-MultipleArgs=false
Icon=/home/USERNAME/.local/share/icons/firefox-heart.png
StartupWMClass=org.mozilla.firefox.Personal
DBusActivatable=false
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=application/json;application/pdf;application/rdf+xml;application/rss+xml;application/x-xpinstall;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;audio/flac;audio/ogg;audio/webm;image/avif;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;image/svg+xml;image/webp;text/html;text/xml;video/ogg;video/webm;x-scheme-handler/chrome;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/mailto;
StartupNotify=true
Actions=new-window;new-private-window;
Name=Firefox (Personal)
Comment=Fast and private browser
GenericName=Web Browser
Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer;
X-GNOME-FullName=Mozilla Firefox

[Desktop Action new-window]
Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run >--env=MOZ_APP_REMOTINGNAME=Personal >--branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=firefox >--file-forwarding org.mozilla.firefox --profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal" --name org.mozilla.firefox.Personal >--class org.mozilla.firefox.Personal --new-window @@u %u @@
Name=New Window

[Desktop Action new-private-window]
Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run >--env=MOZ_APP_REMOTINGNAME=Personal >--branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=firefox >--file-forwarding org.mozilla.firefox --profile "/home/USERNAME/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/mozilla/firefox/personal" --name org.mozilla.firefox.Personal --class org.mozilla.firefox.Personal --private-window @@u %u @@
Name=New Private Window

OC by @novafunc@discuss.tchncs.de

  • cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
    9·
    5 hours ago

    .desktop files are great. Everyone who’s using Desktop Linux should spend some time learning about how they work and what they can do. They take quite a bit of learning to really understand everything they’re doing and how they integrate into different window systems etc, but they’re so much nicer than Windows janky shortcuts/registry garbage. It’s worth the time investment to learn them.

    • harmbugler@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Indeed, and you can pick up the basics in just a few minutes. Bottles recently implemented automatic .desktop files, so you can even get Windows app icons easily without the garbage!

    • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Yes, I second that! I use desktop Linux on and off for like 20 years, with more like on 10 years now, and to my shame, it was about a month or two ago (well, half a year maybe, time flies!) I learned about desktop files. They are so good, I use them for everything now (via application launcher, I use fuzzel). I automated quite a lot with a combination of a simple bash script plus a desktop file to run it. Wish I learned that years ago!

  • illusionist@lemmy.zip
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Nice.

    There’s also a gnome extension for a button in the top bar. But only for the old profiles, not the new ones (not that I wanted the trashy new ones anyway)

    • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      2 hours ago

      What’s the difference? I surely missed the whole thing, I only remember some announcement about the new profiles being simpler and all that. What really changed? And what are you missing with the new implementation?

  • elmicha@feddit.org
    1·
    4 hours ago

    I see several options that start with >--, like >--env=MOZ_APP_REMOTINGNAME=Personal - are these copy and paste errors or is it a special syntax that is described somewhere?