I want to rename profile folder

Question

When I rename a profile, it just changes the Name property in Profiles.ini. So I wanted to rename the profile folder to match. If I rename profile directory, and update the path in Profiles.ini file will it be ok? O

Answer 1

Your question is a bit vague/incomprehensible...

But yes, IIRC renaming the folder and updating Profiles.ini accordingly should be sufficient, at least as far as it concerns the mozilla-powered application in question.

However, you can never be sure about some third-party software, such as add-ons, having hardcoded the old path somewhere else. Because of that I wouldn't recommend renaming the profile folder unless absolutely necessary for some reason.

Renaming a profile while it is running is not possible because there will be some open and locked files. Also, Firefox might cache some absolute paths at runtime besides that.

To repeat...

• Not running: safe to rename for Firefox (or at least that is the goal), but not necessarily third-party stuff.
• Running: Never safe to rename. –

Answer 2

I tried renaming a profile folder of Firefox but addon icons failed to appear next to the browsing bar afterwards (some addon icons like uBlock Origin are hardcoded with the original profile name).

Thunderbird has a similar problem, I lost all open tabs after changing the profile folder name but there may be other issues as well.

In both cases, I updated the profile name in all locations where it appeared in profile files profiles.ini and installs.ini.

I tried going back to the previous folder name but the result was still messed up so I created new profiles (they were new anyway).

So if someone wants to try, I recommend using a test profile first and keep a backup of the original folder.