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albertovski
New member
Status: New idea

Problem:

Firefox now supports multiple profiles, which is great for separating contexts (work, personal, testing, client accounts, etc.). But there's no way to control which profile a link opens in when it's clicked from outside the currently active profile window — whether that link comes from a terminal, an email client, a chat app, an IDE, or another program entirely.

In practice, this means:

  1. You're in some other tool and see a link that should open in a specific profile (say, Work).
  2. Firefox is currently showing a different profile (say, Personal).
  3. You have to manually switch profiles first, or select the Work profile window, and click it.
  4. Only then can you go back to the source tool, re-locate the link, and click/paste it into the now-correct window.

What should be one action — clicking a link — becomes: switch profile → confirm the right window is focused → go back to the source → click/paste the link → verify it landed correctly. Repeated across a normal day of switching between contexts, this adds up to real, constant friction, and undermines the reason for using separate profiles in the first place.

Containers solve a related problem within a single profile, but profiles offer stronger isolation (separate extensions, logins, storage, everything) — and there's currently no equivalent routing mechanism for them.

Requested feature:

Allow users to define pattern-matching rules (regex or glob) that determine which profile a link should open in — conceptually similar to how Multi-Account Containers routes URLs into containers, but targeting profiles instead. For example:

 
*.corp-domain.com/*   → Profile: Work
github.com/myorg/*    → Profile: Work
*                      → Profile: Default

This needs to work regardless of where the link originates — an external app via the OS default-browser handler. Only links clicked inside Firefox itself should open in the current profile.

Why it matters:

Without this, using multiple profiles for genuine isolation is significantly less convenient than it should be — every single link requires manual profile identification and window switching, which defeats much of the productivity benefit profiles are meant to provide.

2 Comments
Status changed to: New idea
Jon
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

cgalex
Strollin' around

Some of my searches pointed out that "Open Link in New Container Tab" might be useful in this situation. But I have different extensions or extension options enabled in different profiles, and since containers within a profile use the same extensions and extension options, that doesn't really fit my need.

For example, I maintain a dozen or so services for a large youth sports non-profit and use a separate password manager account to isolate those credentials from my personal account. Using a separate profile for that work perfectly matches the use case for which profiles were designed, and keeping the different profiles logged in to the separate password manager accounts perfectly matches my needs. But I often receive emails on my personal account, which runs in its own profile. So if I want to follow a link in one of those emails back to the originating site, I need to copy the link, find or open a window in the target profile, paste the link and go. An "Open Link in <Profile>" or "Send Link to <Profile>" context menu option would be a lot simpler.

Similar profile-specific extension issues affect other profiles, all of which run into the same emails-all-go-to-one-profile snag:

  • I use NoScript in all my profiles but permit apply different policies and permit different scripts. Only my financial sites in one, only medical sites in another, only Amazon, only MS, etc.
  • I use a user-agent switcher in my development-focused profile that I don't want to think about in others.

Happy to provide other info as needed.

Thank you!