1610526 - Different taskbar icons for each opened firefox profile

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Shell Integration, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Romain J]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.117 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

1. Add an icon in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\chrome\icons\default

2. Enable the following preferences in user.js for each profile I have in C:\Users[...]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Dissociate each opened profile in the taskbar : user_pref("taskbar.grouping.useprofile", true);

Use of a custom icon : user_pref("toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.windowIcon", true);

3. Launch each profile

Actual results:

Each profile has my new custom icon, defined in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\chrome\icons\default as it should do.

Expected results:

I'm trying to find a way to customize each profile with an unique icon on the taskbar.
I'm only able to change the icon used by ALL profile.

Is there a way to achieve my goal ?

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[Romain J]

Hi Mozilla team,

Any updates on this one ?

Thank's

Comment 4

[Romain J]

Sorry but this isn't a duplicate of this bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1017856
My problem is about setting an unique icon for each profile launched.

For example, if I launch 4 differents profiles, i want them :

• to have separate Firefox icons on the windows taskbar (there is no problem here)
• AND having an unique icon to determine which profile is which just by looking at the icon on the taskbar.

See images uploaded to better comprehension.

Thank's.

Comment 5

[Romain J]

Attachment: 4 different profiles icons.png

I want to achieve something like this.
For each profile I launch, there is an unique icon defined to see which profile is where on the taskbar

Comment 6

[Gingerbread Man]

Changing taskbar icons is done in Windows, but you can't have separate icons by default because the taskbar IDs aren't separate.

1. Ungroup the icons following the directions at bug 1017856, comment 16.
2. Right-click each icon and choose Pin to Taskbar.
3. Right-click a pinned taskbar icon, then right-click Firefox at the top of that menu and choose Properties. Set your custom icon on the Shortcut tab.
4. You may need to restart Windows for the change to take effect. If that doesn't help, clear the icon cache.

I'll let someone else decide if to redupe this to bug 1017856 or turn it into a "main-window.ico per-profile" enhancement request.

Comment 7

[Johan Walles]

I also want this as reported (but on macOS).

If I cmd-TAB and have two different Firefox processes running, each with different active profiles, I want to be able to tell my two Firefoxes apart by looking at their icons.

Or as Gingerbread Man said:

turn it into a "main-window.ico per-profile" enhancement request

Comment 8

[faelin.landy]

+1 for this on macOS, I would love for each instance of Firefox in the dock to have a different icon!

Comment 9

[Mina Galić]

+1 from Linux
Or do we need a new ticket for Unix?

Comment 10

[wearyofallthiscrap]

I'd love to be able to visually distinguish multiple firefox windows all on the taskbar. Either a "normal window" versus "private browsing window" change to icon colors, or -- admittedly this is hardmode -- changing parts of the icon to use the same color as that of the container used for that window.

Obviously wishlist stuff there.

Comment 11

[jeff]

+1 for MacOS, especially to distinguish Firefox profiles in the Cmd+Tab task switcher.

Comment 12

[uvwild]

I just ended up at this very urgent need myself not being able to differentiate the 10 browser windows ...... ;)

The start icon from the shortcut itself is working great, but then......

PLEASE MAKE IT HAPPEN PlEASE

Comment 13

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

This would fall under Firefox :: Shell Integration's ambit, I think, as the private-window grouping changes did. Forwarding.

Comment 14

[tanmaster95]

I would also like this very much on macOS!

Comment 15

[piesepample]

any news here? It's really hard to keep apart Firefox' with different profiles in the taskbar.

Comment 16

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

(In reply to piesepample from comment #15)

any news here? It's really hard to keep apart Firefox' with different profiles in the taskbar.

This has not been prioritized by our team. To be completely honest, I think it's unlikely that this will be prioritized.

1. This would be surprisingly complicated to implement. I won't go in to the details here, but if you are interested you can look at Bug 1749830 and all of its dependencies as well as Bug 1819549 Comment 3 for examples of why this sort of thing would be complicated just to implement on Windows, not to mention other platforms.
2. The impact wouldn't be very high. Running multiple profiles is not a very highly used feature, especially since the rise of things like Mult-Account Containers.
3. This is competing with a LOT of other bugs and feature requests for attention.

The most likely way for this to be fixed is for a passionate contributor to work with us on it and write a patch that we could review.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Comment 17

[Mario Sottile]

I went to google to look exactly this request. I understand everything (or almost) you said and I think that there could be a (awfull) workaround: to compile new Firefox versions with different icons each. And, obviously, to launch them at the same time.

Is this a relatively good idea or it will consume so much more CPU process and RAM?

Comment 18

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

(In reply to Mario Sottile from comment #17)

I went to google to look exactly this request. I understand everything (or almost) you said and I think that there could be a (awfull) workaround: to compile new Firefox versions with different icons each. And, obviously, to launch them at the same time.

Is this a relatively good idea or it will consume so much more CPU process and RAM?

We are not doing that for just a whole bunch of reasons. It's not actually even clear to me that this simplifies anything, and it would make a whole bunch of other things more complicated.

Comment 20

[R. Diez]

I wanted to mention a situation where a different taskbar icon on Linux would be nice. I am using Skype online, the URL is https://web.skype.com/
The online version is the easiest and safest way to use Skype on Linux.
I have a desktop shortcut like this:

firefox-esr --profile "/home/rdiez/rdiez-Firefox-profile-for-Skype" https://web.skype.com/

I have a separate Skype account for family and friends, and I told it to remember my password, so a double-click on the desktop shortcut is all I need to do. Unfortunately, Microsoft wants you to have a single sign-on, and I also have a different Microsoft account for Hotmail etc., so I need a separate container or profile for the Skype web page. I am not sure whether you can automate opening a URL in a separate container which remembers cookies or a separate account password. Using a separate profile works just fine.

I have set the icon on the desktop shortcut to be the blue Skype logo, but unfortunately, the taskbar icon is still the standard Firefox one. So I cannot quickly tell which Firefox instance is the one for Skype, and which instance is for everything else.

Comment 21

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

(In reply to R. Diez from comment #20)

I am not sure whether you can automate opening a URL in a separate container which remembers cookies or a separate account password. Using a separate profile works just fine.

I'm not sure what level of automation you want, but you can simply do a hold down the mouse button on the "New Tab" plus icon in the tab bar and select which container you want before you open the URL.

Comment 22

[R. Diez]

Double-clicking on an icon is certainly more convenient than having to select a container when opening a URL. Besides, I have a laptop which auto-opens "Skype online" on start-up, using the command I wrote above, without any user interaction at all.

Comment 23

[Daniel]

(In reply to Robin Steuber (they/them) [:bytesized] from comment #16)

(In reply to piesepample from comment #15)

any news here? It's really hard to keep apart Firefox' with different profiles in the taskbar.

This has not been prioritized by our team. To be completely honest, I think it's unlikely that this will be prioritized.

1. This would be surprisingly complicated to implement. I won't go in to the details here, but if you are interested you can look at Bug 1749830 and all of its dependencies as well as Bug 1819549 Comment 3 for examples of why this sort of thing would be complicated just to implement on Windows, not to mention other platforms.
2. The impact wouldn't be very high. Running multiple profiles is not a very highly used feature, especially since the rise of things like Mult-Account Containers.
3. This is competing with a LOT of other bugs and feature requests for attention.

The most likely way for this to be fixed is for a passionate contributor to work with us on it and write a patch that we could review.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

That's really sorry to hear.

The lack of simple profile management (related #1542189) already puts Firefox miles behind Chrome and Edge and I would love if Firefox would catch up to what Chrome delivers for some years already. This bug here is the logical continuation of profiles. If you have profiles, you need a way to distinguish individual profiles from each other. This is also something Chrome and Edge do right!

The impact wouldn't be very high. Running multiple profiles is not a very highly used feature, especially since the rise of things like Mult-Account Containers.

I would argue that this extension only gains traction because profile support is so poor in Firefox.

Comment 25

[R. Diez]

(In reply to Roxana from comment #24)

Use a Different Browser:

This is what I have been doing on some other computers where the user is no IT expert, where I launch Skype in Chromium. Unfortunately, Ubuntu's Chromium is installed as a Snap package, which means little problems here and there. There are of course workarounds I could further investigate. In any case, starting another browser means a higher system load, and more importantly, normal users do not really want to learn 2 different browser user interfaces (even though Firefox and Chromium are similar, they are not the same).

Most browsers allow you to set custom icons for desktop shortcuts

All desktop environments (not the browser) allow you to set custom icons for desktop shortcuts. That is what I am doing on Ubuntu MATE. But the Skype icon is only for the desktop shortcut. When the browser starts, the taskbar icon is different.

On Windows, I hear that you can change the icons if you "pin" the shortcuts to the taskbar, but I haven't seen anything like that on Linux yet.

On Ubuntu MATE, I can create a Firefox launcher directly on the taskbar, and I change the launcher icon, but when Firefox starts, the taskbar icon is always the standard Firefox logo.

Browser Extensions: "Favicon Changer"

"Favicon Changer" seems an extension for Chromium. Can you confirm that there is such an extension for Firefox which is able to change the Taskbar icon? Most websites have favicons, but those do not affect the taskbar icon, as far as I can see on Linux.

Comment 26

[uvwild]

I followed some advice from another user a while ago. (dont ask me where)
I repeated it like so and it worked quite well.

1. create a dir Shortcut from the FIrefox Program directory C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\ like
   C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox SecondProfile\
2. then create shortcut from the executable firefox.exe on the desktop or somewhere.
3. In this shortcut which is an independet instance you can change the icon.
4. the link should contain the profile name "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -no-remote -P SecondProfile"

This works fairly well and even survives the automated firefox updates. There are hickups, and you cannot open a new window a profile already running from the taskbar, it stalls! you have to use the opened firefox window for this.

(In reply to Romain J from comment #0)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.117 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

1. Add an icon in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\chrome\icons\default

2. Enable the following preferences in user.js for each profile I have in C:\Users[...]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Dissociate each opened profile in the taskbar : user_pref("taskbar.grouping.useprofile", true);

Use of a custom icon : user_pref("toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.windowIcon", true);

3. Launch each profile

Actual results:

Each profile has my new custom icon, defined in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\chrome\icons\default as it should do.

Expected results:

I'm trying to find a way to customize each profile with an unique icon on the taskbar.
I'm only able to change the icon used by ALL profile.

Is there a way to achieve my goal ?