Hello all,
Brave seems to me to have evolved a lot and I would like to switch completely to it.
I use multiple profiles for my browsers. I use this in Firefox. I also want to use them in Brave the same way.
In Brave I want to use 3 profiles. Personal, Work, Kids.
The thing is, my Personal profile I want it to be on another partition, a Veracrypt container. I moved the profile in the container and created a Windows shortcut to that profile with mklink…like so :
mklink /J \Destination\Profile3 \Source\Profile3
Mind you that I mount manually the Veracrypt container when needed…when I use the Personal profile.
So far everything works fine !!
The problem is when I tested what happens if I start the Personal profile without the container being mounted. I get 4 errors and then Brave starts with a default profile. After that I close Brave, mount the Veracrypt container with my Personal profile being available again…but when I start Brave-Personal again, I get the same default/guest profile from before. The “connection” between Brave and my actual Person folder is severed permanently.
I use this the same way with Firefox and it works flawlessly. In sense that if the container is not mounted, FF-Personal shows 1 error and closes. After I mount the container FF-Personal-Profile starts with no problem.
I know its a particular situation, but still can you fix this in Brave ? If the profile is missing maybe show the options to create another profile or close Brave.
I understand that the profile philosophy is different on Brave than in Firefox, but you really should adapt this in some way, because more and more people are starting to use Brave. Firefox manages the multi profile situation very well and robust.
And now a days you want separate more and more your web activity and it’s better to use more profiles instead of different browsers.
I really hope you solve this “problem” because I want to migrate on a lot of different devices to Brave.
Wow, thanks for the quick reply and for reorganizing the text !!
Q1 : No, the mklink was step 0, and used only once. By “profile being available again” I meant that after mounting the veracrypt container, drive Z: is available again, where the actual Personal profile is situated … and the link/shortcut works again.
The cmd that I used in Windows, for more clarity :
I think what happens is the when starting the Personal profile, if the folder is not found. Brave will “switch” to the Default profile.
The problem is that Brave thinks that “Profile 4” is no more, and it will not search for it EVER.
I understand this logic, because if you delete say Profile 1 or Profile 2 or even Default … Brave shoud be able to work again and create another profile. But in a case like mine, this is terrible management.
Still, Firefox managed to do this multi-profile thing very good and robust. Please understand that I use Firefox and Brave alongside, and I have much love for both bowsers, still Brave seems to work more on software, improvement and bugs, not politics and money revenue…
about this, I know about it, btw the parameter is “–user_data_dir”.
What I discovered so far :
It doesn’t work anymore :
“C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe” --user_data_dir_name=“z:\Brave\Profile 4”
or this
“C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe” --user_data_dir=“z:\Brave\Profile 4” It just opens the last profile that was closed.
This works, it’s made by Brave
“C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe” --profile-directory=“Profile 4”
as long as I have the link and the container is mounted.
This used to work
“C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe” --user_data_dir=“z:\Brave\Profile 4”
BUT NOT THIS
“C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe” --user_data_dir=“z:\Brave\Profile 4\”
The worst one :
If someone or my kid hits by mistake the shortcut for my personal folder, or it switches by mistake to my personal profile WHILE the container with my profile is not mounted = I can say good bye to my profile !
Is this way of handling multiple profiles a Chromium or a Brave thing ?
I never used multiple profiles so far on other browsers than Mozilla based.
I don’t know the latest versions of Windows because I haven’t used it since 2007 at home and have only seen it in other people’s homes since then.
Rather than modifying the launcher that points to the Z drive, I would create a symlink in the file explorer. With Linux, it’s very simple: you take the folder that works on Z by holding down the Shift and Ctrl keys when you drop it on C.
In the profiles folder on C, I’d copy the name of a working profile, then delete it and give its name to the symlink I’ve just brought up.
I made some other tests. It works fine when you put the folder name instead of the path in the command :
brave-browser --profile-directory=“Profile 4” or brave-browser --user-data-dir=“Profile 4”
The profile is on an USB key. When it’s ejected and I try to launch that profile, it opens a window to select witch profile I want to launch. The same as with the command:
brave-browser --choose-profile
When the USB key is plugged again it works as before…
I haven’t Windows so I don’t hide a folder in a container… Access to files and folders is managed via linux sessions (users and groups with different levels of access).