1. What are Profiles

Profiles are a feature of the Mozilla platform available to all XULRunner programs. A profile contains all kinds of information, including browsing history, bookmarks, logins, cookies, session information, certain caches, and more. Profile data is normally stored in ~/.conkeror.mozdev.org/.

Any running instance of Conkeror uses one and only one profile, and conversely, a profile may only be used by one instance at a time. Thus if you want to run multiple instances of Conkeror at the same time, you need to use a separate profile for each.

2. Using Multiple Profiles

Open the profile manager to create a new profile:

conkeror -no-remote -ProfileManager

Run a session of conkeror with a particular profile:

conkeror -no-remote -P some-profile

The -no-remote switch given in the commands above is not necessary if there are no running instances of Conkeror.

Once you start using multiple profiles, you should always specify a profile when launching Conkeror. There seems to be no robust means as yet to assign a default profile.

3. Tips

If you are using Conkeror with multiple profiles, you may find the following code handy. It puts the name of your current profile into the titles of Conkeror's windows.

function my_title_format (window) {
    return '{'+get_current_profile()+'} '+window.buffers.current.description;
}

title_format_fn = my_title_format;