How to create a Chrome profile programmatically?

Question

Development, testing, staging environments are controlled via different proxy servers in my setup. I want to script creation of multiple Chrome profiles (sometimes called \"user

Answer 1

Creating a user

The following example applies to Windows, but the basic procedure should be the same.

First, change to the UserData folder in your Chrome installation:

cd "%APPDATA%\..\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data"

This method will copy the current user as a template for the new user. If the new user should be blank, you need to delete (CTRL + SHIFT + DEL the current browser data).

Now create a new user:

mkdir NewUser && copy Default NewUser

Change your directory to the chrome installation:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application"

Factory-Reset all user parameters:

chrome.exe --user-data-dir="..\User Data\NewUser" -first-run

where --user-data-dir is the path (full or relative) to the previously created NewUser directory.

Running as NewUser

To run chrome again using this profile, simply run chrome without the -first-run flag.