What the Heck Are Browser Profiles?

Google Chrome introduced "profiles" some years ago and they've been messing with people's heads ever since. Few people really understand what profiles do and Chrome does nothing to help with that.

A profile in Chrome is the user's browser storage environment. That is, all the bookmarks, passwords, extensions, stored cookies, credit card info, background color theme, starting screen icons, and whatever else a person customizes and allows Chrome to remember.

Other browsers, like Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox, have also since introduced profiles. Before profiles were introduced, the browser could only remember one set of bookmarks (favorites, in Edge), one set of passwords, etc. For the longest time that was fine. And it's still fine in most cases today. Profiles have a pretty limited use case.

Profiles are not password protected so they aren't really intended for multiple users. If you have 2+ people sharing the same computer, you should not use browser profiles as a way for each person to have their own bookmarks, passwords, etc. That's what user accounts are for in Windows!

Then what good are profiles?

Profiles let a user wear several hats, so to speak. Here's what I mean by that.

Let us assume a person, Bob, has two computers that he uses -- one at home and one at work.

Bob has work-related bookmarks and passwords and home/personal-related bookmarks and passwords. If Bob stored all his passwords in only one profile and that profile synced between both computers that Bob uses (home and work), then his personal data would be on the work computer. Not good.

But if Bob set up two profiles on his home computer, one for home-related things and one for work-related things, then he could select the home profile for things like his bank. And he could use the work profile for things like his work email and other websites he needs for work.

This way, Bob can save personal bookmarks and passwords on the home profile and set it to not sync anywhere, or maybe sync to his personal laptop, if he has one. But for his work profile, he can set it to sync to his work computer. That way, he has access to work-related bookmarks and passwords while at work.

Did that make sense?

How Google made it confusing

When you first sign into a Google-based email address, either ending with @gmail.com or a custom domain hosted on Google Workspace, Chrome will ask you if you want to create a profile for that email address and sign-in for cloud-syncing of your profile.

A lot of people answer "yes" to this question, thinking that's necessary to access their email, and without understanding what that question really means.

Over time, people inadvertently find themselves with two, three, or more Chrome profiles, each with their own isolated storage for bookmarks and passwords. As users sign into different Google-based accounts and browse from whichever profile (tab) happens to be active, their bookmarks and passwords become more and more scattered across profiles and they become inconsistent. e.g. Some are on profile A, some are on B, etc.

e.g. Say the user accessed their bank from profile A then later on unknowingly accessed it from profile B (again, not understanding that multiple profiles are in effect), the login will again ask for the bank password. If the user forgot the password, which users do all the time, they might reset the password and it'll be stored in profile B.

Then the next day, the user tries logging into the bank from profile A, which still has the old password, and can't login. So they reset the password yet again, pulling their hair out because they were sure they did that the day before.

Now, multiply that frustration across dozens of websites and passwords. The user winds up endlessly resetting passwords because they don't realize they've activated multiple profiles or even what that means! I've seen this time and time again with my clients.

Google has facilitated countless hours of grief, account lockouts, and headaches to people who swear the browser is gaslighting them. And people still don't know how that happened. How can a user even begin to fix it if they're unaware that multiple profiles are to blame?

So, unless you know exactly what profiles do, why they exist, and how to use them, then my best advice is to not allow them. That means answering "no" when Chrome asks if you'd like to create a new profile.

The first and default profile, which is automatic, is all the vast majority of people need. So unless you have a specific need otherwise, I recommend using only one profile.