Google Chrome new profile: what to set up first

A new Chrome profile takes about thirty seconds to create. Open Chrome, select the Profile icon at the top right, choose Add Chrome profile, decide whether to sign in, then pick a name, photo and colour. That is the whole flow, and it is the same on a Mac as anywhere else. The part that decides whether the profile is still in use a month from now comes after: the new profile starts with nothing in it, and the first ten minutes of setup are what make it usable. This guide walks through the creation steps with the menu names Chrome uses today, what the profile does and does not inherit, how to move bookmarks and passwords in, and the settings worth fixing before the profile carries real work. Menu names and behaviour below were checked against Google's own help pages on October 18, 2026.

The steps, with the names Chrome actually shows

Google's help page Manage Chrome with multiple profiles lists the current flow. In order:

1. Open Chrome.
2. At the top right, select Profile (the round avatar).
3. Select Add Chrome profile.
4. Choose whether to sign in with a Google Account or continue without one.
5. Choose a name, photo and colour scheme.

Two details on that same page are easy to miss. First, if the new profile is signed in to a Google Account, Chrome sets the profile name to the account name automatically. A short label such as "Work" has to be applied afterwards, through Profile > Customize profile, or through Manage Chrome profiles, then More > Edit on the profile card. Changes there save automatically.

Second, the Manage Chrome profiles screen has a checkbox at the bottom called Show on startup. With it ticked, Chrome opens the profile picker every time it launches instead of reopening the last profile used. On a Mac that runs two or three profiles, this one setting removes the most common mistake, which is starting the day in the wrong identity and noticing only after a message has gone out.

Where the profile lives on disk

Each profile is a folder inside Chrome's user data directory. The Chromium project documents the layout in User Data Directory: on macOS, the directory sits under the user's Application Support folder, and the first profile is a folder named Default. Later profiles get folder names such as Profile 1, Profile 2 and so on. The same document notes that typing chrome://version into the address bar shows the Profile Path for the window in front. That path is the only reliable way to match a label on screen to a folder on disk, which matters as soon as a script or shortcut needs to open a specific profile.

Sign in, or keep it local

The setup screen treats signing in as optional, and it is. A profile with no Google Account attached is a complete browser. It keeps its own cookies, history, extensions and saved passwords. According to Google's password help page, when the profile is not signed in, Chrome stores passwords locally on the device rather than in a Google Account.

Signing in changes three things at once:

Effect	Signed in	Not signed in
Bookmarks, passwords and settings	Saved to the Google Account and available on other signed-in devices	Stored only in this profile folder on this Mac
Profile name	Becomes the account name automatically	Whatever was typed at setup
Deleting the profile	Synced data stays in the account	Data is gone with the folder

The choice follows from what the profile is for. A profile that exists to hold one client's logins on one machine does not need an account, and keeping it local avoids mixing that client's bookmarks into a personal Google Account. A profile whose bookmarks and passwords need to be on a phone or a second Mac has to be signed in, since there is no local mechanism in Chrome that does the same job.

There is one more consequence worth naming. The help page warns that anyone with access to the Mac can switch to any Chrome profile on it. Profiles separate accounts. They are not a lock. A profile that holds sensitive sessions on a shared machine still needs the Mac's own user accounts for real separation.

What the new profile starts without

The most common surprise is how empty the profile is. It does not copy anything from the profile that was open when Add Chrome profile was pressed. Bookmarks, saved passwords, extensions, history, open tabs and site logins all start blank.

Each item has a different path in.

Bookmarks

Google's page Import Chrome bookmarks and settings describes both halves. In the old profile, open More > Bookmarks and lists > Bookmark Manager, then More > Export Bookmarks. Chrome writes an HTML file. In the new profile, open More > Bookmarks and lists > Import bookmarks and settings, choose Choose file, and select that HTML file. If the new profile has no bookmarks yet, the imported ones land on the bookmarks bar. If it already has some, they go into the Other bookmarks folder.

For a profile created to split one working life from another, exporting everything and then deleting half is slower than it sounds. A faster route is to drag the bookmarks that belong to the new role into one folder in the old profile first, export, import, and then delete that folder from the old side.

Passwords

In the old profile, open More > Passwords and autofill > Google Password Manager, select Settings on the left, and use Download file next to Export Passwords. The file is a plain CSV that anything can read, so it should be imported into the new profile and then deleted straight away rather than left in the Downloads folder. When both profiles are signed in to the same Google Account, there is nothing to export at all, because the passwords follow the account.

Extensions and logins

Extensions are installed per profile and have to be added again from the Chrome Web Store. Their internal settings do not travel, and any extension with its own sign-in, such as a password manager, needs that sign-in repeated. Site logins never move between profiles by design. That is the separation the profile exists to provide.

Ten minutes of setup that keep the profile in use

A profile that is awkward to reach gets abandoned, and its folder sits on disk for years. These settings remove most of the friction.

Pick a colour that cannot be confused

The colour chosen at setup tints the window frame, and on a Mac with several profiles it is the fastest signal of which identity is in front. Pick colours far apart on the wheel. Two shades of blue will be mistaken for each other within a week.

Name by role, not by party

"Work", "Client", "Admin" and "Testing" stay true when the underlying account changes. Client names change at the end of a contract, and full email addresses are unreadable in the narrow profile menu because the useful part sits after the at sign.

Give it a launcher

Switching through the avatar menu means opening the wrong profile first. Launching the right one directly skips that. On a Mac, the Terminal command below opens a profile by its folder name, which chrome://version reveals:

open -na "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory="Profile 2"

The value is the folder name, not the label. If the folder does not exist, Chrome creates a new empty profile rather than refusing, so a typo in a saved shortcut produces a mysterious blank profile every time it is used. Saving the command in a Shortcuts action or a small Automator app gives each profile its own icon in the Dock.

Decide which profile receives outside links

Links clicked in Mail, Slack or a calendar invitation open in whichever Chrome window macOS treats as most recent. Chrome cannot know that a link belongs to the work account. There is no setting inside Chrome that routes links by profile, so the practical rule is to keep the profile that should receive outside links in front and open the others deliberately.

Check that the separation actually holds

A profile can look correct and still share something it should not. Two checks take a minute.

Open the same service, for example Gmail, in both profiles side by side. Each should show a different account, and signing in on one should not sign the other out. If it does, both windows belong to the same profile, which happens when a launcher points at the wrong folder.

Then look at the password manager extension. A manager signed in to the same vault in both profiles will offer credentials from either side, which reintroduces the mix-up the profile was created to prevent. Restricting each installation to the right vault is a setting inside the manager, not inside Chrome.

Removing a profile, and when Chrome makes one by itself

Deleting a profile is done from Manage Chrome profiles: select the profile, then More > Delete at the top right of its card, and confirm. Google's help page is explicit that bookmarks, history, passwords and other settings in that profile are erased from the computer. Anything synced to a Google Account survives in the account. A profile that was never signed in has no copy anywhere, so for local profiles, exporting bookmarks and passwords first is the only safety net.

Profiles sometimes appear without anyone pressing Add Chrome profile. The usual causes are predictable. A saved shortcut with a --profile-directory value that points at a missing folder creates a new empty profile each time. Signing in to an account managed by an employer or school can prompt Chrome to keep that account in a separate profile, and accepting creates one on the spot. And a blank profile named "Person 1" after an update or crash often means Chrome could not read the existing profile folder, not that the data was deleted. Checking chrome://version and the user data directory before creating anything new avoids stacking a second empty profile on top of the first problem.

When one more profile is not the fix

A Chrome profile solves exactly one problem well: two sessions on the same site at the same time. Each extra profile adds another window to find, another Dock icon or launcher, another set of notifications that all appear to come from "Google Chrome", and another question about where outside links land. At two profiles this is manageable. At four or five, the friction stops being about logins and becomes about finding the right window.

That is the point where a different unit of separation is worth a look. An app aggregation browser keeps each web app, rather than each identity, in its own isolated session, so a work Gmail and a personal Gmail can both stay signed in inside one window with separate cookies. The Workspaces page shows how that grouping works, and the Features page lists link routing and the shared notification centre that replace the per-profile habits above. Readers comparing paid options in this category can check Pricing, where the free plan currently covers one workspace with up to three apps, and the ability to sign in to one service with several accounts is part of the paid tier.

What to change first

Create the profile, then before using it for real work: rename it by role, pick a colour far from the others, tick Show on startup, and move bookmarks and passwords in through the export files. If this is the fourth profile rather than the second, count the windows first, because that is the problem SpaceDeck is built around.