Best way to manage multiple sets of credentials/profiles?

Brass Contributor

Great job on the new Edge, it's gotten to the point where the Canary channel now acts as my primary browser and I rarely have any issues whatsoever. Looking forward to seeing upcoming features!

 

One thing I'm struggling with in most browsers, however, is how to manage multiple 'profiles' each with their own cookies/sessions/sets of tabs. For in stance, I have personal accounts on many websites that I keep open as pinned tabs, but I also have work-related accounts on many of the same sites. Often I would have a "personal session" with a number of tabs open, and a "work session" with a completely different set of tabs open, each for separate purposes. To manage them both efficiently, I have to pretty much have two separate browsers open which is cumbersome since I'd much rather just use Edge for all of it.

 

Using private browsing doesn't work well since I'd have to set up say, a 'work' session all over again each time I start up the browser. Something like Firefox' multi-account containers work OK, but they are on a per-tab basis which is a little bit annoying to manage.

 

What I would really love to see is something like this - by clicking my profile picture, there would be an "Add session" button that lets me open a completely new set of tabs that store its own cookies. Clicking on the profile button would then let me switch back and forth between the two sets of tabs instantly, with no need for two separate windows, or having two separate MS accounts. Bookmarks, saved passwords etc. would be shared and the only thing the sessions are used for are currently open tabs, and cookies.

 

Is this something that might at all be in the works currently, or could be resolved through a browser plugin? Alternatively, does anyone know of a better method altogether to manage this? Would be interested to hear of any thoughts or suggestions!

4 Replies

@ivarhill This feature already exists. Click on your profile picture and "Add a profile".

Creating another profile doesn't allow sign in to a work office 365 account though or am I missing something?
When you change the profile, you start with a brand fresh environment. You can then connect to your work office 365 with your organization login. The cookies will be stored on this profile only.
You can have multiple Edge open, each with a different profile for each tenant you have to log into.

For info: https://www.rophelders.com/2018/07/05/staying-signed-into-multiple-office365-tenants-with-google-chr...

Thanks for the response! I missed this feature since I assumed it was just for switching the MS account associated with the browser but it looks like it's closer to what I was looking for than I thought.

It doesn't work quite perfectly for my needs - opening two separate windows rather than just switching back and forth in a single window feels a bit clunky, but that's a minor thing. Much more importantly, it's treated as a completely different account in terms of syncing, bookmarks, saved passwords and so on which means I have to copy these things back and forth all the time when I'm just looking to toggle sessions/opened tabs and nothing else. A "light" mode for this feature which only distinguishes between open tabs and cookies would be extremely useful, although it's probably too niche to be all that relevant to most.

 

Nonetheless, even what's currently present is much better than dealing with two separate browsers, so thanks for letting me know!