Google Chrome Browser Profiles

Much has been written recently about the amazing feature of Google Chrome “Profiles”, or the ability to have separate / fire-walled browsing sessions open at one time. See Google’s article on the feature here.

While it is described as a way to allow family members to have their own Chrome profile one the one PC, this is a life-saver for those of us who need to sign-in to different accounts all at once. For example, I need to have 4 or 10 (!) sessions running where I’m signed into different customer sites as a Sys Admin etc. Or even impersonation when I’m running a demo and wish to show what things look like to different users.

There are two ways I’ve found to update images that can aid in visual recognition when you’ve got many profiles running.

All of these methods come with a big **Do this at your own risk!!** warning, as there are probably instances here where you could end up corrupting something accidentally. Overall though I think the risks are minimal. As others have noted also, running many concurrent profiles may cause more memory usage on your system.

Updating Chrome Avatars for the Profile Switcher

Firstly, to update the out-of-the-box avatar images, which tricks it into displaying your custom image, rather than the included avatar.

Create your Google Profile first (choosing the first avatar)
in this case it’s the “default white avatar”
*for more detailed steps there is plenty of info online available

Now to replace the image:

Click Windows START menu
Type %LocalAppData% and hit ENTER
Open the Google folder
Open Chrome folder
Open User Data folder
Open Avatars folder
Inside you will see the generic avatar “avatar_generic.png”
You need to replace this PNG with your own image but leave the name the same
Once done, you will need to close all Chrome sessions/windows and restart it to see results.

Notes:

After replacing the out-of-the-box avatar, it still will show as the original image when you create new profiles. This means you have to sort of “remember” which ones you’ve already used/replaced already.
Whereas previously you could use the “dog” avatar for many profiles, that will make less sense from now on if you’ve replaced the image with a company’s logo etc. But this is OK if you are creating a few profiles to demo different users within the same company.

Updating Windows Taskbar Icon

Updating the Taskbar icon means you get your custom logo instead of the default Google Chrome Logo. Note you still see the default avatar (eg. the Dog) even though you have replaced that Avatar for the Menus/Profile Switcher. But as that is small, I haven’t been bothered by it.

To update the icon:

Click Windows START menu
Type %LocalAppData% and hit ENTER
Open the Google folder
Open Chrome folder
Open User Data folder
Open the Profile folder (there may be many)
these are numbered Profile 1, Profile 2, Profile 3 etc so can be a bit tricky to identify
Locate the Google Profile.ico file

Replace the .ico file with one of your own
I used an online site to convert my PNG image into an ICO file format

Notes:

This doesn’t work for the default Profile (your main one) as far as I know, only the additional Profiles you add
I’ve had one of the Profile’s ICO images revert back to default (for some unknown reason) So not sure how permanent this is, but mine have been running for months without issue.

Other Things

I’ve also done some other things to make life more manageable for myself on each Profile, and curious if anyone else has any more tips to add?

Added common Bookmarks/Favourites
Added a HomePage/Starting Page so it logs straight into Dynamics 365
Used Chrome’s Saved Password feature for speedy access (if appropriate in your security environment)
Cleared ALL Cache (to keep size small), then backed up the Entire Profile folder in the event I want to take them with me, or for safe-keeping should they get corrupted/damaged.

I’d love to see Google offer more options to change icons/avatars natively in future, or perhaps someone with ability to build Chrome Extensions could build a Persona Manager app?

Hope this helps some of you.