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Hey! Just updated Orion, and I absolutely LOVE the new profiles! Good work guys!

I still have a suggestions that would make the experience even better in my opinion.

First of all, while I know some people really like this behaviour, I find the fact that Orion opens a separate profile with a separate app icon in my dock very cluttering. I'm on a 13" device, and it's not a rare occasion that I use 3-5 Profiles at the same time, cutting my dock icon size in half because of 5 Orion icons. I would prefer this to be an option, as some users seem to like the indication, but I really think this change would help profile users on smaller devices.
Additionally, I find it confusing that Orion behaves as if the profiles are actually separate apps in other ways too - e.g. I cannot close fully close the browser with one ⌘Q but have to go through my dock my dock and kill off every profile instance individually.

So, I would consider a more consolidated approach to managing profiles in the Orion browser much more efficient, especially coming from other browsers, that work exactly like this.

  • Vlad and CyrusOnOrionBroser replied to this.

    • Vlad

    • Best Answerset by Vlad

    eirk

    There are multiple benefits to current way of handling profiles:

    • There is a significant performance benefit to current way of handling profiles. A slow tab/website/extension in one profile does not impact Orion instance running in the other profile as they are two separate apps from the standpoint of the OS task scheduler.

    • Another direct benefit is that an app crash in one profile does not bring down all other open profiles with it.

    • Separating profile via apps ensures sandboxing of data between them

    • You can use native macOS feature such as cmd + tab to switch between profiles

    This is just some of the main benefits I am sure there are more.

    Welcoming further thoughts on this topic. Is the dock clutter really the only reason some people dislike this despite all the benefits listed here?

      gitarero164

      Closing just one instance on quit is a feature. We can add a checkbox "Close other profiles on quit" in the quit dialogue?

      We have chosen to use separate apps because it is more powerful and it gives users more control. Users can even keep their profile on dock and launch it directly. Also in an event of crash, only the affected profile will crash, all others will stay untouched.

      I think using 5-6 profiles is unusual and perhaps your use case really needs just session/container tabs, not profiles?

          Vlad Closing just one instance on quit surely is a feature that some people will enjoy, a setting to change that would be useful in my opinion though.

          Keeping profiles on the dock might give more control depending on how you work, but this implementation removes the sleekness and organizational benefits of having different profiles instead of having whole separate browsers for different purposes... Having this many profiles is probably unusual, yes. Thats why I suggested it would be great to have an option at some point, not that my preferred behaviour is the best for all users and should be the default.

          Having the option to do it this way might also make it easier for users to migrate from Chromium-based profiles, as they behave the way I described above?

          • Vlad replied to this.

              gitarero164

              Having the option to do it this way might also make it easier for users to migrate from Chromium-based profiles, as they behave the way I described above?

              We need to hear more users on this. I think the main benefit of Profiles is there.

                  Vlad Yup, would be interesting to hear more opinions on this.
                  I can't tell how you have implemented profiles so I'm not aware how much work these options would be.

                  And the main benefit of profiles is definitely there - this is just some quality-of-life improvements that I personally think would improve the experience using the feature.

                      @dino is this possible at all with our approach?

                      • dino replied to this.

                        Vlad We can have tow options to remove clutter for some user

                        1. Have additional checkbox on Quit to terminate all running instances
                        2. We can have additional Preference tab for Profiles and have below options
                        3. Use separate instance for each active profile (or will exit active instance when switching to other profile, so there will be only one instance running at a time)
                        4. Terminate all running profiles on Quit

                        Not sure if I am on the same page..

                          What would be the preffered behavior here?

                            a month later

                            I know this thread is a bit old, I was going to open a similar suggestion. It would be nice to have a setting for profiles that let's you open a profile in a new tab. Similar to how firefox does Container Tabs. So people could choose either open in new browser instance or in new tab to keep it clean

                            • Vlad replied to this.
                              2 years later

                              currently, there are multiple dock icons for different orion profiles, but this is such an annoying mess for dock management, because if you pin it to the dock, it only pins the specific profile attached to the dock icon instance.

                              orion should try to be more like safari, or even arc in the sense that it either:

                              opens multiple windows under the same dock icon:

                              or

                              manages multiple profiles in one window (ignore profile name 💀):

                              versions:
                              orion 0.99.129-beta (WebKit 619.1.11.111.2)
                              macOS 15.1 (24B83)

                              I agree but I'm not sure how Alt-Tab would work under this scenario. In Arc, as far as I know, there isn't the idea of having 2 open instances with 2 separate profiles - instead, one open instance has one open profile at any one time. I personally like that behaviour, but I'm not sure how Safari does it.

                                Merged 3 posts from Make all orion windows under one instance of orion in the dock.

                                  Brief Summary
                                  I would like the devs to consider possibly reworking Orion's profile management system to act like Safari's profile management. I like to have multiple browser profiles active when online. This means that the dock slowly becomes cluttered with many Orion icons w different profile icons. The WebApps on the other hand are fine.

                                  Details:
                                  This feature request is best explained by the picture provided. But to put it into words, I would like to remove all active profiles as apps from the dock and consolidate them to the top bar on the window like safari has it.

                                  End Goal:
                                  To declutter the dock and make the user experience better for those who have multiple profiles active at a given time.

                                  Image/Video:

                                    hungryDev89 Note that in the meantime you can assign different icons to different profiles.

                                    The approach we took has mutiple advantages as it allows for true sandboxing of data between profiles.

                                    We are however open to discussion about changing this and are welcoming community feedback.

                                      hungryDev89 If that change was made would you also expect all the profiles to be merged into a single Orion icon in the ⌘-Tab switcher?

                                          Hmm... I don't know as much about macOS's frameworks so correct me if Im wrong here, but is it possible to rework it as possibly either a menubar process or even a system process that isn't user facing? The end goal is to declutter but if it means sacrificing the ability to sandbox data then I'd rather keep the current implementation.

                                            adamaveray yes I believe so. I use alt-tab due to apples stubbornly flawed tabbing design so I totally forgot about this kind of scenario. If thats the case, I would also like to be able to switch between profiles using the ctrl - Tab feature but again this maybe going out of scope for the original idea here.