How to Make a Desktop Shortcut for a Chrome Profile

A profile shortcut opens Chrome straight into one profile, so your work profile and your personal profile can each have their own icon. On Windows, Chrome makes the shortcut for you with one switch. On Mac and Linux, you launch Chrome with the --profile-directory option, which is the same option Chrome’s own Windows shortcuts use.

Windows, the quick way: open Chrome in the profile you want, click the profile picture at the top right, click Customize profile, then turn on Create desktop shortcut.

No profiles yet? Start with adding a Chrome profile.

Windows: turn on the desktop shortcut

1. Open Chrome and switch to the profile that needs a shortcut.
2. Click the Profile picture at the top right, then Customize profile. You can also paste chrome://settings/manageProfile into the address bar.
3. Turn on Create desktop shortcut. Chrome describes it as a desktop shortcut “to access directly to this profile”.

Repeat this in each profile. Turning the switch off removes that profile’s shortcut. The switch only appears on Windows; Chrome for Mac and Linux does not have it, so use the steps below there.

Step 1 for a manual shortcut: find the profile’s folder name

A manual shortcut needs the name of the folder the profile lives in, which is usually not the name you see in Chrome. The first profile’s folder is called Default, and the ones added after it are numbered in the order they were made: Profile 1, Profile 2 and so on. Numbers from deleted profiles are not reused, so check rather than guess.

1. Open Chrome in the profile you want.
2. Paste chrome://version into the address bar and press Enter.
3. Look at the Profile Path line. The last part of the path is the folder name, for example Profile 2 in C:\Users\Alice\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Profile 2.

Type the folder name exactly. If the name does not match an existing folder, Chrome does not show an error. It creates a new, empty profile with that folder name, which looks as if your bookmarks and passwords vanished.

Step 2: make the shortcut

Windows

1. Right-click an existing Chrome shortcut on your desktop, click Copy, then right-click the desktop and Paste.
2. Right-click the copy and choose Properties.
3. In the Target box, click at the very end, after the closing quote of the chrome.exe path, type a space and then the option with your folder name:

   --profile-directory="Profile 2"

4. Click OK, then rename the shortcut so you know which profile it opens.

Starting from an existing shortcut keeps the correct path to chrome.exe for your computer.

Mac

Run this in Terminal, with your folder name:

open -na "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory="Profile 2"

The -n part tells macOS to start Chrome with the option even if Chrome is already running, and --args hands everything after it to Chrome.

Linux

Run this in a terminal, or use it as the command in your desktop’s launcher or keyboard shortcut settings:

google-chrome --profile-directory="Profile 2"

Where the profile folders are

All profile folders sit inside Chrome’s user data folder. The Chromium project’s user data directory documentation lists the default locations:

• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data
• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome
• Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome

Leave these folders alone while Chrome is running. Renaming or moving a profile folder breaks shortcuts that point to it. For more ways to work with several profiles at once, see tips for running several Chrome profiles.