Deeper Integration with Firefox's Underlying Multi-Instance Profiles

[SamGreenwood1]

Hi everyone,

I'm Sam, a student and a big fan of Zen Browser. I appreciate its focused environment and Zen's existing "Profiles" feature for organizing workflows.

Knowing Zen Browser is built on the Firefox core, I'm proposing a critical UX improvement regarding Firefox's native, underlying multi-instance profile system. This would provide deeper isolation than Zen's current profiles.

The Problem / Current Situation

While Zen Browser has its own profiles for session management, Firefox's core profiles offer a powerful, distinct level of separation for:

• Extensions, History, Cookies, Bookmarks, Settings, and more. (See: Firefox Profile Manager)

The issue is that this robust underlying Firefox profile system is largely hidden from the user interface (as it often is in vanilla Firefox too). This means:

• Undiscovered Feature: Users may not even be aware these powerful isolation features exist within Zen Browser.
• Difficult Management: There's no straightforward way to create, switch, or manage these underlying profiles directly within Zen Browser's UI.
• Limited Deep Isolation: Without visibility and control, Zen Browser's focused sessions default to an implicit, often generic, underlying profile, preventing users from leveraging true data separation for specific tasks, even when using Zen's own profiles.

The Proposed Solution: Surface and Integrate Underlying Firefox Profiles

My request is to make the underlying Firefox profile system more visible and manageable within Zen Browser's UI. This is distinct from Zen Browser's existing profile feature and aims for deeper isolation. This could include:

• Accessible Manager: A prominent UI element (e.g., a menu option in Settings, or a dedicated panel) to easily view, create, and manage underlying Firefox profiles.
• Explicit Session Linking: When starting a new Zen session or activating a Zen Profile, offer an option to link it to a specific underlying Firefox profile.
• Quick Switcher: A mechanism to quickly switch between or launch into different underlying Firefox profiles from within Zen Browser.

Why This is Important

As a student, deep, robust separation between academic, personal, and project-specific browsing environments (each with unique extensions and data) is paramount for focus and data integrity. Surfacing and integrating underlying Firefox profiles would unlock this power, ensuring dedicated contexts for Zen's focused workflows, complementing its existing profile system.

Thank you for considering this! I'm curious to hear thoughts from the community and the team.