Can my chrome extension open a link in a different profile?

Question

I use two different Chrome profiles (users) on my laptop: one for my work stuff and one for my personal browsing.

Sometimes I click a link from HipChat and it opens it in the personal profile even though it's for work (e.g. login.work.com). (This is because I happen to have been in my personal chrome window most recently.)

I'd like to make a chrome extension I can install in my personal profile to match the URLs of *.work.com and send these over to the work profile window.

I haven't found a way to open a url into a different profile. Anyone know of a way?

(A hacky idea I got from reading https://superuser.com/a/289618 is maybe I could shell out to something along the lines of google-chrome --user-data-dir=$work_profile, but I'd be happier if there was a JS API and I didn't have to ask permission to run programs on the user's computer.)

Answer 1

Dropping an answer in case it's still useful to anyone.

I built my chrome extension CopyTabs (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/copytabs/obkbjogekcjalnaebheboejhfkamadkg) to do something similar. It is able to open links, current tabs, selected tabs or windows, in the current chrome user profile, another chrome user profile or another browser entirely.

I made use of chrome.exe --profile-directory="profileName" to open URLs in a selected profile, but this has a handler that runs on the user's machine, with profileName being the internal name of the chrome profile, for example --profile-directory="Profile1" instead of --profile-directory="My Name As Profile".

So to answer your question, no I don't think there's anyway around a local handler on the user's machine to achieve this functionality.

Answer 2

There is no solution for this. It would need a handler, a separate program, that captures the URL before it reaches Chrome, parses your preferences for which URLs go to which profile and then starts the specified Chrome installation with specified profile flags.

However, afaik, such a program does not exist (at least on Windows).

Further, Chrome cannot even select which profile out of many is selected, when Chrome is started from the OS "call URL to be opened" function and NOT started by user-activated clicking on a Chrome application shortcut (with specific profile selection instructions).

Naturally, the latter works 100% wonderfully on Firefox, which has built-in profile selector after the browser has been started, and regardless of which method was used to start Firefox (user click on Firefox icon or OS pipe of "open URL" to Firefox).

So; no solution in Chrome.

Answer 3

Though the question is an old one but maybe someone is looking for an answer.

In the new versions of chrome when you right click on a link, in the pop-up menu, there is an option to open the link in another profile. For this to work, ofcourse, there need to be multiple user profiles in Chrome.

Works like a charm!

Hope it helps.