How to create desktop shortcut for Chrome profile and run two or more profiles simultaneously?

Question

I am new to Mac, and I have my rough time (missing keys, wrong shortcuts and etc). But I don't give up. I am a JS developer with more than 10 years of Windows and Linux (Debian, Ubuntu) experience and I need another Chrome profile accessible on a demand. The easiest way for me is another icon in Dock (and on the desktop). It is very easy in Windows - one just have to make shortcut and enter command line for chrome which looks like this: google-chrome --profile-directory=Default

For OS X I found command line is

open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Default

How to make a shortcut in Dock and on Desktop using it?

Please mind the subject (question), it is important for me, that shortcuts has to allow running multiple profiles simultaneously. I didn't stated it first time, because it was obvious for me it will work that way (Linux and Windows just do it).

Answer 1

Since there are several possible answers, I will introduce a more exotic one:

• Download and install Platypus

• Create a file chromedefault.sh in ~/Documents/scripts/ with the content:

  #!/bin/bash
  open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Default
  

• Open Platypus with the following settings:

  

  and create a new "app" ChromeDefault.

• For a second app with the profile Other use another script chromeother.sh with appropriate changes:

  #!/bin/bash
  open -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory=Other
  

  and call it ChromeOther.

• Put both apps in the /Applications folder and create as many symlinks or aliases as needed.

Answer 2

Open Script Editor from /Application/Utilities >> create a new doc >> paste following:

do shell script "/Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\\ Chrome --profile-directory=Profile\\ 3 > /dev/null 2>&1 &"

FYI:

\\ contains a space (the first back slash escapes the second back slash which escapes the space!);

and user profile ../Chrome/Profile 3 will be --profile-directory=Profile\\ 3 in the code, ../Chrome/Profile 2 will be --profile-directory=Profile\\ 2, ../Chrome/Default will be --profile-directory=Default

Try to run it and save it if it works.

Answer 3

Building on klanomath's answer, I wrote the following shell script:

#! /usr/local/bin/zsh

declare -a profiles=( "Default" "Profile 3" "Profile 4" )
declare -a profile_aliases=( one two three )

if [ -z $1 ]; then
    exit
fi

for n ({1..${#profile_aliases}}); do
    if [ $profile_aliases[$n] = $1 ]; then
        #echo $profiles[$n];
        /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --new-window --profile-directory="${profiles[$n]}"
    fi
done

this enables you to run ./chrome.sh one, which will launch the Default folder. The main difference in this and the other solutions here is the --new-window switch, which makes Chrome run in a new window. Also, I'm just using the Google Chrome executable, which just made sense to me.

Answer 4

just use the Automater app. its built into macOS to make the shell script into am app.