How to change Chrome profile on a Mac, in every sense

The phrase covers at least three separate jobs, and the steps for one do nothing for the others. Changing to a different profile for the next hour of work is a switch. Changing the profile that Chrome opens with every morning is a startup setting. Changing the Google account that a profile is signed in to is a sign-out and a sign-in, with consequences for the data already sitting in that profile. Most of the frustration around this comes from doing the first when the third was needed, then finding the old bookmarks still in the way.

Deciding which change is actually needed

Before touching anything, it is worth naming the outcome.

If the goal is to work under a different identity right now, the switcher is the answer and nothing needs to be configured. If the goal is that Chrome stops opening the wrong identity when the Mac starts, the startup behaviour is the setting to reach for. If the goal is that a profile called Work now belongs to a different work address, the account attached to it has to be changed, which is the only one of the three that can destroy data.

There is a fourth case that hides behind the same words. Sometimes what needs changing is not the profile but the way profiles are identified, because the mistake being made is opening the correct profile and not noticing it is the wrong one. That is a naming and colour problem, and it is covered further down.

Switching to another profile

Select the avatar button at the top right of the window, then choose the profile to move to. Chrome opens that profile in a new window.

The window that was in front stays on its original profile. Nothing converts. This is the single most useful fact about switching, and it explains two things that look like faults. Tabs do not follow the switch, because they belong to the profile that opened them. And the number of open windows grows through the day, since every switch adds one rather than replacing one.

Closing the old window after switching keeps the count under control, at the cost of losing its tabs. Leaving it open keeps the work available, at the cost of two similar windows that have to be told apart by a small avatar in the corner.

There is no menu entry that moves an open tab into another profile. Moving work across means copying the address and opening it in the other window. For anything reached often, saving it as a bookmark inside the destination profile removes the copy step permanently, since bookmarks are stored per profile and the two lists never meet.

Changing the profile that opens at startup

By default Chrome reopens whichever profile was used last, which is why a machine restarted overnight can start the morning in the wrong identity. The fix is the profile picker, and Google's help describes where it lives.

You can adjust your settings to display all Chrome profiles when you open a new browser session. Source: support.google.com

The steps are the avatar button, then Manage Chrome profiles, then the Show on startup option at the bottom of that window. Chrome then asks which profile to open instead of guessing, which costs one click each morning and removes an entire class of error.

The alternative, for anyone who already knows which profile the day starts in, is to launch that one directly rather than launching Chrome and correcting it. Chrome accepts a flag naming the profile folder.

open -na "/Applications/Google Chrome.app" --args --profile-directory="Profile 2"

Two details decide whether this works. Without -n, a Chrome that is already running simply brings an existing window forward and discards the rest of the command. And the application path should be written in full, because several applications built on Chromium carry the same process name and a bare name can match the wrong one.

Finding the folder name behind a profile

The flag above takes the folder name, not the name shown on screen. These are different values, and assuming they match is the usual reason the command opens an empty profile instead of the intended one.

Profiles live under ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/. The first is always Default, and later ones are Profile 1, Profile 2 and so on in creation order. Renaming a profile to Work changes the label and leaves the folder untouched. Deleting one does not renumber the rest, so a machine can hold Default, Profile 1 and Profile 4 with nothing in between.

The quickest way to read the value is to open chrome://version in the window in question and look at the Profile Path line. The full mapping between folder names, display names and signed-in addresses sits in a file called Local State in the parent directory.

One behaviour is worth knowing before experimenting. A folder name that does not exist is not an error. Chrome creates a new empty profile under that name and opens it, which looks exactly like being signed out, so a typo can send several minutes in the wrong direction.

Changing a profile's name, colour or photo

This is the change most worth making and the one most often skipped. Select the avatar button, then Customise profile for the current one, or Manage Chrome profiles and the edit action for any other. Changes save as they are made.

Three choices make the result readable. Use a short label rather than an email address, because the switcher truncates long names and two addresses at the same domain look identical when truncated. Choose colours that sit far apart, since a blue and a navy profile are indistinguishable at the edge of vision even though they look different side by side in the picker. And set an actual photo where two profiles belong to the same person, because the initial shown by default will be the same letter in both.

None of this changes what a profile holds. It changes how often the wrong window receives an hour of work, which is the failure that costs the most and gets configured for the least.

Changing the Google account a profile uses

This is the destructive one. A profile signed in to one address does not become a profile for another address by signing in a second time. The existing bookmarks, history, passwords, extensions and site permissions belong to the profile, not to the account, and they stay where they are.

The sequence that produces a clean result is to open the settings, turn off synchronisation, then sign out. Chrome offers to clear that profile's local copy of the synced data as part of signing out, and for accounts managed by an organisation the clearing can be enforced rather than offered. Only after that does signing in with the new address give a profile that holds one identity.

Anything worth keeping should leave before the sign-out. The bookmark manager exports an HTML file that any profile can import, and passwords can be exported as a CSV file, which should be deleted from disk once it has been imported somewhere safe.

For a work address that is being replaced by another work address, a new profile is usually less work than converting an old one. The conversion carries every extension and permission granted over the past year into a context that may no longer be entitled to them.

What changing the profile does not change

Some things sit above the profile and stay put no matter which one is in front.

Item	Follows the profile	Notes
Bookmarks, history, passwords	Yes	Separate store per profile
Extensions and their settings	Yes	Installed into one profile only
Download location	No, unless set per profile	Same folder by default
Links opened from other apps	No	The system opens Chrome, not a profile
Dock icon and app switcher entry	No	One Chrome for every profile
Browser version and updates	No	One application on disk

The row that causes the most daily friction is the third from the bottom. A link clicked in a chat client or a mail client is handed to the default browser, which answers with a window of its own choosing. No profile setting changes that, because the operating system is choosing an application and the application is choosing a window.

That is the boundary where profile management stops paying off. Splitting by account fixes the mixing of data. It does not give each account and each application a distinct place on screen, which is the model set out under Workspaces and across the feature set. Which services can run that way is listed under supported apps.

Changing which profile a link arrives in

Since the operating system hands a link to Chrome rather than to a profile, the useful question is which window Chrome will use. In practice it uses the Chrome window that was most recently in front, which turns an unpredictable behaviour into a controllable one.

The habit that follows is small. Before clicking a work link in a chat client, bring the work profile window forward once. Every link that follows lands there until a different Chrome window is used. It is not elegant, and it is far quicker than opening the wrong document, switching profile, and pasting the address into the other window.

Two harder options exist for anyone who wants this handled rather than remembered. The first is to stop making Chrome the system default and give that role to a browser used for nothing else, so that links arrive in a known place and are moved deliberately from there. The cost is a second application in the switcher and a manual step on every link that belongs elsewhere.

The second is a small helper application that receives links and decides where to send them based on the address. Tools of this kind exist for macOS and are configured with rules, such as sending a company domain to one profile and everything else to another. They work, and they add a piece of software to maintain between the operating system and the browser.

Both approaches are workarounds for the same structural fact. There is one Chrome, and the profile is a setting inside it rather than something the rest of the system can see. Any routing that depends on the profile has to be rebuilt outside the browser, because the browser does not expose it. A model where each application and account already owns a separate window, and is visible to the operating system as such, removes the need for the routing layer entirely rather than automating it.

What to change first

Set the startup picker on, then give every profile a short label and a colour that is nothing like its neighbours. Those two changes take a few minutes and remove most wrong window errors. If the switching still happens many times a day after that, the thing that needs changing is not the profile but the window it lives in, which is what SpaceDeck is built around.