Google Chrome's Profile Switcher

Lately I've been using a few different Office 365, Microsoft Azure, Twitter and Hootsuite accounts and using the InPrivate or Incognito modes within browsers has been handy to keep the accounts and passwords separately but I've found a better way of managing these accounts, using Google Chrome's Profile Switcher feature! The Google Chrome Profile Switcher allows you to create different Chrome profiles enabling you to have different bookmarks, different extensions, plug ins, etc.  So if like me you have to juggle different accounts you can set up profiles that can deal with these.  For example at home I have a Chrome profile for my personal everyday use and one for dealing with my user group.  At work I have several different ones relating to the different projects or demo environments that I need access to every day.

Setting up

Whatever operating system platform you are using this procedure should be the same.  Within your Chrome session you will notice a small person icon or your name in the right hand corner.

From here you can setup up a profile or create additional ones.

Making use of Google Profile Switcher

As I mentioned I have a profile for my everyday browsing, which is my default profile and also a profile for when I am doing stuff to promote the Glasgow Azure User Group.  When I launch Chrome on my PC my name "Sarah" profile loads, but I can easily change to my other profile by clicking on my name in the top right, select my "Sarah @ GAUG" profile and my PC will open a new Chrome session within the profile context. You can run your different Chrome sessions side by side, as you can see from my (messy) taskbar I have two Chrome sessions open. The one nearest the left hand side is my name one, identified by the avatar and the one on the right with the pizza avatar is my second profile. Also a great feature that can be used is when you find a link within a session if you right click on it you have the ability to launch your other profile if necessary. No complicated copy/paste methods needed you can just right click and switch. As you can see from the screenshot below I've found a link I want to browse as my main "Sarah" profile but I am currently browsing in my "Sarah @ GAUG" profile, so I right click and get the option to open the link under a different profile.  

Overview

This is a great wee feature built into Chrome that I love using to help me be more efficient.  How are you using this feature? I've loved to hear your experiences.