Google Chrome’s multiple user profiles

Google Chrome has started supporting multiple user profiles. Not sure when they added this, but this definitely has eased my online shopping experience. If you are someone who shares your computer with other members of your family, then this is definitely a great blessing. These separate profiles have their own set of bookmarks, saved form data and passwords, and any extensions installed.

But the best part is for people like me, who maintain multiple Google accounts for separating their personal, social and business profiles online. For example, my Face-book, Google+ account is meant for socialising, so it is different from my personal account that I use for banking transactions, bill payments, etc. If you shop online, you can use a different Google account for trusted sites like Amazon/eBay and some other account, for other new unpopular websites. This helps in reducing the impact on your privacy, if one account gets compromised.

Even for my business hosting account, I have linked it as a Gmail account via Google Apps. This means when I am working, I can easily switch my Chrome browser between personal, social or business profiles.

How is this useful? Well, to demonstrate that, first make sure you have Chrome 19.x.x.x or above. Now go to the wrench menu at top right corner of Chrome and choose Settings…  This will present the customizable Options tab. Scroll down to see the Users section. You can add new users to this section by logging into each account. Each user can be assigned a name and picture. When done, close the settings tab. That’s it! Chrome is now ready to switch between your accounts in a single click… On the top left corner, you will see the chosen picture of currently logged-in account. Click the picture, and a fly out will show all the registered users on that machine. Each user session is maintained in a new Chrome window. If you have Win7, the the taskbar will show the user-specific picture overlaid on the chrome icon – makes it easier to differentiate each session.