Similar to other individuals in this group, I participate in many activities, such as work, education, volunteer, and hobbies. As such I require my daily driver browser to be one that is able to properly handle and manage all these different tasks that I perform on a daily basis. Brave has quickly moved up the ranks and is now becoming my go-to browser but as I have just finished migrating all my data, I realized that brave is severely lacking a feature that I NEED to perform my daily tasks with ease and efficiency. THIS FEATURE IS A WAY TO SELECT MY PROFILE CHOICE WHEN LAUNCHING MY BROWSER AFTER SHUTDOWN. Right now, when starting up brave, I enter the profile of my last used profile, and therefore I must go into the setting and switch the profile. This simple fact has really confused me and even caused me to combine my different activities when in a hurry. On top of this, I am also unable to change the profile icon to something other than the default colors. I myself am not a color person so this has led to further confusion.
Below I will detail the problem as well as the desired solution/request.
Problem:
Currently, when loading up the brave browser, I am immediately taken to my last used profile. As in the last profile that I closed is the one that loads up. For example, in the below image you see that I am on Profile 2. If and when I close the browser, the same Profile 2 is the one that will open. This fact has proven to be a major annoyance and has severely impacted the way I handle work-life balance.
I would like to propose that rather than starting Brave Browser with the last used profile, we have an option to start brave with Profile Manager that will allow us to choose our desired profile workspace to enter. Below I have attached an image of what I am proposing to be the start-up prompt.
As you can see, from the above image, after launching the brave browser, I would have an option to select my desired profile to enter. Someone such as myself who has 5-7 profiles will find great use in this feature ( Especially if I am also able to change my profile image to further distinguish between my different workspaces… I am not a fan of colors. ).
Conclusion
I hope to really see this feature implemented within brave. I have already migrated my entire work-life onto brave and am loving the experience so far. This feature would complete and thus make Brave my favorite browser of all.
If someone knows how to currently do this I would really appreciate it if you could share with me as well as anyone else who may find this feature to be helpful.
One thing you can do to circumvent this is simply right-click on the browser icon to open it. You’ll notice that it allows you to launch a new window by profile in the context menu:
Hey @Mattches, thank you so much for the quick response. Yes, I initially looked for this feature since it is present in chrome but for some reason on windows, I am unable to find the option to open other profiles by right-clicking the application on the taskbar.
Here is an image of what I see when I right-click on windows:
Hello @Mattches, I found this very interesting as well when I was migrating over to the brave browser. Yes, I am currently running the latest version of brave which is v1.14.84.
@imkam,
Can you try deleting that shortcut, then re-running the installer (don’t worry, this will not overwrite/erase any data – also, don’t uninstall, just re-run the installer)? When the installer finishes, re-add the shortcut to the task bar and see if the rest of the options appear.
@imkam,
Hmm so it appears that I was incorrect – I don’t believe at this point that those same options will appear on Windows.
That said, one thing that does happen when you create a new profile is that the browser should automatically create a shortcut for this profile on your desktop, which you can use to launch the browser to that profile. Additionally – although it’s slightly messier – you can simply launch a profile, right click on the icon in the taskbar and “pin” that profile (specifically) to the task bar as a short cut. Now, any time you launch the browser using that shortcut, it will launch with the designated profile.
Hey, @Mattches thanks for helping me with this. It really means a lot. I did also try to pin the shortcut that was created by brave and despite it being pinned, the pinned profile shortcut still opened up the last profile as supposed to the one that it links too. Let me hop on my computer real quick and see if I can perform some screengrabs of the process.
Hey @Mattches, I have to apologize. I retried the workaround solution that you provided and it actually works! Now it definitely does add more icons in my taskbar, but for now, this really does help me with my workflow.
***Still, I would love to see a feature that a user can turn or off that keeps one instance of brave in the taskbar and prompts a user to choose which profile to enter.
Hey @Mattches I actually found a solution/workaround to the feature request and wanted to detail the “fix” in this thread for those who may want or desire this in the future.
Initial Problem: I wanted a way to start up the profiles manager, depicted below, rather than an actual brave instance.
Solution:
Step 1: Right-click on Desktop and select option “New” then click on the shortcut element.
