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I've two Google Chrome profiles, one is a personal profile and the other is a work profile.

Until now, I was switching between profiles from the top right corner of the google chrome menu. So whenever I close chrome and reopen, it'd open the window for whatever the last opened profile was.

I've implemented a solution for opening desired profile directly by creating two separate .desktop files in ~.local/share/applications.

This allows me to bypass the profile switching step from inside chrome when I wanted to open a profile other than what was opened by default.

The actual purpose is solved, but there's another problem that I'm facing after implementing this.

I've added shortcuts for both profiles to the launcher.

  1. I open let's say 1st profile by clicking on its icon from the launcher.
  2. Now I open the 2nd profile in the same way.

But the launcher highlights only the icon of the first window and shows two dots as if two windows are open for the first icon only (Attachment). Which is not the case.

two-dots-in-first-icon

I think I'm missing something in my .desktop files which I'm not able to find the solution of anywhere. I'm attaching the content of both files here.

  1. chrome-default-profile.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Name=Google Chrome Main
Exec=google-chrome --profile-directory=Default
Icon=chrome_default.png
  1. chrome-work-profile.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Name=Google Chrome Work
Exec=google-chrome --profile-directory="Profile 2"
Icon=chrome_work.png

I hope there's some solution for this because without this my purpose for a separate profile icon is not solved fully.

TheCleverIdiot
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  • Are you using the Unity desktop, since you tagged "Unity"? Default desktop is not Unity, but Gnome Shell. – vanadium May 08 '21 at 12:14
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    This is a similar question for Chromium: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1112571/how-can-i-start-a-separate-instance-not-profile-of-chromium-with-its-own-icon – vanadium May 08 '21 at 12:58
  • @vanadium yes I'm using unity. And I tried the solution provided in the answer you suggested. It solves the purpose for what the person was looking for who originally posted the question.

    What it does is it starts a whole new Chrome Session with the guest profile in which none of my existing profiles are listed.

     – TheCleverIdiot May 09 '21 at 15:59
  • No, it starts Chrome with the profile of your choice. – vanadium May 09 '21 at 16:14
  • I followed the same steps. Maybe it has to do something google-chrome. Because the mentioned answer is for chromium. – TheCleverIdiot May 09 '21 at 16:23
  • You have, of course, to adapt for your personal situation. It will be very similar for Chrome as it is for Chromium. – vanadium May 09 '21 at 16:25

1 Answers1

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This is not a direct solution, but for anyone interested in solving this problem with an alternative solution, here are two:

  1. Install/Enable Dash to Panel extension, then enable Ungroup Applications, then go to Ungroup Applications settings and set max width for apps titles to 0:

  2. Install a third party tool like Tint2. It's a lightweight taskbar that actually splits your chrome profiles in different taskbar icons.

Gabo
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