Like most people, you probably use your laptop and mobile devices for a variety of purposes. The more reasons you have for using your computer, the more extensions you may need to install and the more bookmarks you need to save. Doing this clutters your browser and makes it more difficult to find what you need quickly. Having all this data and different programs can slow your browser down. Using different browser user profiles can help solve this problem.
What is a browser profile?
Browser profiles are separate profiles for separate users on a computer. They keep all the stuff you collect as you browse the Internet, like your history, bookmarks, passwords, and extensions. If you share your computer with someone else, you can have separate profiles for each person so you don’t have to worry about sharing information.
But even if you don’t have someone sharing your computer, there are several excellent reasons for having more than one profile for yourself.
You have different roles in life, and each one of them requires different information. If you have your own business, you may need extensions for productivity or organization. You probably won’t need those same tools when you are scrolling through social media on a Friday night, so why load them?
Rather than building a vast collection of extensions, passwords, and other information that has to load every time you launch your browser, you can open only what you need.
Social media is another reason to set up more than one browser profile. If you have multiple social media accounts, you can set up each browser to open only the appropriate social media account. Then you will save the time it takes to keep logging in and logging out on one profile.
In the new Microsoft Edge, you can create something called Collections. A Collection is like a digital scrapbook. Keeping Collections separate by profile can make them easier to navigate and maintain.
If you’re not sure how to set up a separate browser profile in the new Microsoft Edge, you can learn to do that here.
Benefits of Using Different Profiles?
There are several different types of profiles you may want to create for yourself. Here are some ideas and some reasons why you should consider having these particular multiple profiles.
1. They keep Work Separate from Personal
Especially if you are working from home, which right now in April 2020, we all pretty much are, you will want to keep your work data separate from everything else. You can keep distracting apps and web pages off your work profile with one of many productivity extensions.
2. They Provide a Place for Storing Fun Ideas
If you have a hobby that takes up your time and that you often search for information about online, a hobby profile could work for you. For example, if you search for free patterns for woodworking or crochet, a separate profile will keep all those pages in one easy-to-find location. The hobby profile is an excellent place to put a hobby-focused Pinterest account, too.
3. You Can Organize Your Writing and Research
If you have a blog, use a separate profile for everything you need to manage it. You don’t need a social media scheduler extension for work, so why keep it open when you’re not going to use it? Separate bookmarks for your blog’s website and pages you use to make graphics can make this profile useful.
4. Get the Best Prices on Your Trips
If you travel even just now and then, a travel profile is handy in two different ways. You can save everything you want to bookmarks or collections without adding to the clutter on a single profile.
Using a second profile just for travel can save you money, too. When you shop for airline tickets online, the site will sometimes use cookies to identify you and bump up the price to encourage you to buy quickly. Use this dedicated travel profile to do all your research, and then make your final purchase on a personal or shopping profile.
5. Keep Your Banking and Shopping Secure
Your banking and other sensitive information can be at risk when you use only one profile because the cookies social media and other sites use can compromise the data. You can keep this profile locked down with a higher-level security than what you may want to use every day.
6. Keep Your Personal Web Surfing Private
The final category of browser user profiles you may want to have at your fingertips is a personal profile. You can use this for anything else that doesn’t fit into other categories. You might wish to keep your personal social media accounts on this profile.
Your imagination and circumstances only limit the number of different profiles you have. If you want to keep your browsers from having memory issues or just want to have a cleaner-looking browser, using separate profiles is something you should try.
You can also use different browsers for some of the profiles to increase security.
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Tracey Rosenberger spent 26 years teaching elementary students, using technology to enhance learning. Now she's excited to share helpful technology with teachers and everyone else who sees tech as intimidating.
The article seems to assume that the reader already knows what a browser user profile is, and how to set one up. Lacking this most basic information, the article was almost useless for me.
The one big disadvantage of multiple profiles is the work and time involved in maintaining them and remembering the proper profile to use for a particular activity.