Google Chrome’s Profile Support Makes Better Sandboxing A Reality

After looking through the Google Chrome command line info I noticed that the browser supports both multiple profiles and an application view. Putting these two features together means I can have what I always wanted: truly sandboxed apps! What I always wanted Prism to be! I have to imagine a concept similar to this one must exist for that app as well, but it may not be as easy to set up.

Just run this from the Windows command line:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --user-data-dir=”%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data for App Sandboxes\ MYPROFILENAME” --app MYAPPDOMAIN.COM

Alternately, you can make an app in the browser and just add the user-data-dir flag to the shortcut.

I’ve tested this a couple of times now and seems to work great. You can make yourself shortcuts to individual apps and also group together related apps’ profile access. A nice example of this is my freelance work. I can make a profile that saves all the passwords for the Google Analytics, web hosting and site CMS logins and it will be totally sandboxed from a different client’s profile or even my personal stuff. This is super handy with sites like 1and1 or bluehost or any of the Google stuff.

A side note to all of this is that I noticed once in app mode you cant drag one profile’s tabs into another profile’s window. It makes perfect sense, and its a nice UX constraint.