1964283 - Users cannot find new profile folders when Firefox is not running

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[08xjcec48]

Steps to reproduce:

• Use the new profile manager to create a profile with a custom name
• Try to find its folder on your computer

Actual results:

Profiles created with the new profile manager have folder names like RqlLK6hA.Profile 1, which do not include the custom names we give them.

You need to use the old profile manager to get to the folder where your profiles are stored. Then, even if you get there, you won't be able to tell them apart, unless you know their original creation order (Profile 1, Profile 2, etc.).

Expected results:

The new profile manager should automatically append custom names to profile folders, like the old manager. For example: RqlLK6hA.testprofile.Profile 1

Comment 1

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Given how the UI works (the profile is not given a name until after creation) this is technically difficult to implement.

Comment 2

[08xjcec48]

Profiles can be renamed, so having a folder with the original name would actually not be optimal.

What about this:

• Add a 📁 icon to open the folders for each profile from the Choose a profile/Manage profiles dialog - it's already possible to open classic profile folders from about:profiles, and we point users to this button every day on support communities
• Create a {profile name}.name file in each folder and overwrite it every time the profile name is updated - this is to help users find the right folder when they cannot open Firefox, want to restore it from a backup, etc. The addition of this file would have no performance cost, as this will be done only once for most new profiles

Comment 3

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to 08xjcec48 from comment #2)

Profiles can be renamed, so having a folder with the original name would actually not be optimal.

What about this:

• Add a 📁 icon to open the folders for each profile from the Choose a profile/Manage profiles dialog - it's already possible to open classic profile folders from about:profiles, and we point users to this button every day on support communities

This is already provided in about:support. Generally users do not need access to the profile folder so I would not add it to the new UI.

• Create a {profile name}.name file in each folder and overwrite it every time the profile name is updated - this is to help users find the right folder when they cannot open Firefox, want to restore it from a backup, etc. The addition of this file would have no performance cost, as this will be done only once for most new profiles

I guess it would be possible to do a symlink or something. We do run the risk of naming conflicts so there would have to be some thought on how to handle that. If someone were to provide a patch that I would look at it but this isn't something Mozilla would spend time to implement.

Comment 4

[08xjcec48]

I didn't mean anything as complex as a symlink or that could cause conflicts. Just a simple dummy file with the same name as the profile inside its folder, so that users can find it quickly with File Explorer or another file manager when Firefox is not running.