Recently I wanted to set up multiple profiles in Google Chrome. One for my personal browsing and one for my work. This way I don’t need to sign in and out from my different google, twitter, flickr and facebook accounts.
There is no GUI for this and it involves running some command line but it’s not too hard.
You should run all commands on one line and make sure to change the paths to your user name and profile.
Windows 7 / Vista
First you make a copy of your current default profile. You can do it either in Windows Explorer on on the command line.
xcopy "C:UsersOlaAppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataDefault" "C:UsersOlaAppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataOla" /e /i /h
Then you reset your new profile
C:UsersOlaAppDataLocalGoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe --user-data-dir="C:UsersOlaAppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataOla" -first-run
Then you create a new shortcut on your desktop to launch your new profile
C:UsersOlaAppDataLocalGoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe --user-data-dir="C:UsersOlaAppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataOla"
Ubuntu 10.10 (Linux)
Copy default profile
cp -r /home/ola/.config/google-chrome/Default/ /home/ola/.config/google-chrome/Ola
Reset your new profile
/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --user-data-dir="/home/ola/.config/google-chrome/Ola" -first-run
And add a new Launcher (shortcut)
/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --user-data-dir="/home/ola/.config/google-chrome/Ola" -first-run
That’s all there is to it.