Using Firefox profiles


Most of the issues reported with DownloadHelper are due to incompatibilities with other extensions, themes or a mis-configuration of Firefox. A simple way to investigate that kind of issue consists of re-starting from a clean install of Firefox, re-installing DownloadHelper and testing if the problem still happens.

However most people don't want to break their existing configuration, their bookmarks and all the extensions they have installed and tuned, and they are right not to be willing to do so.

Fortunately, Firefox has a very convenient feature that allows doing clean install tests without breaking. This is called the Profile Manager.

Everything you do with your favorite browser after the installation is performed within the context of a profile:

  • Bookmarks
  • Extensions
  • Themes
  • Firefox configuration
  • Browser cache
  • Cookies
  • Browser history
  • Saved passwords
  • ...

When you install Firefox, a default profile is automatically created for you and chances are that you never know about it. The idea here is to create a new profile, do some checkings on this profile and switch back to your initial profile when you are done.

The first thing to do is to launch the Profile Manager. This is done by running Firefox with the -ProfileManager command line option.

On Windows

You should certainly have the Firefox icon on your desktop. Simply move this icon to an unused location of your desktop while holding the CTRL key. This will make a copy of this icon.

If you don't have the Firefox icon on your desktop, try to mouse-drag the item you click to run the browser to the desktop.

Right-click on the new icon and choose Properties from the menu.

A dialog box opens. Change both fields:

  • In the General tab, replace the icon name from Firefox (or Mozilla Firefox or Copy of Firefox) to Firefox Profile Manager
  • In the Shortcut tab, replace the Target field from "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" to "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -ProfileManager

Click OK to validate your entries. Then double-click on the icon to start Firefox in Profile Manager mode.

On Linux

From a shell, run:
firefox -ProfileManager

On Mac OS X

If someone could send a description of the process on Mac to support, we and many Mac users would be very grateful !


Profile Manager

Click on Create Profile, then Next and enter a name for your new profile, for instance Test. Click OK to validate the profile, then double-click on the new profile name to start a brand new Firefox.

Note that if you restart Firefox the normal way, it will use the last selected profile, so you will have to run the profile manager once more to re-select the Default profile.