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I use Chrome as my main browser. I also spend a lot of time on a particular webapp that my company uses. I'd like to keep those two things separate.

I can run the webapp in a separate window - but I'd like to go further than that. I'd like to have it be identified by a different task in the Win 7 taskbar; ideally a different icon; and ideally a different title in Process Monitor. How can I run a second, independent instance of Chrome, with a different title and icon, that won't merge with my main Chrome browser.

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8 Answers 8

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Settings->Add Person, choose icon, give it a name, make sure 'Create desktop shortcut for this user' is checked. Once you open this shortcut, it'll show up on your taskbar as a separate icon.

Read this for more details: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089364/how-to-create-and-manage-multiple-user-profiles-in-chrome.html

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    I don't think this answers "I'd like to have it be identified by a different task in the Win 7 taskbar; ideally a different icon; and ideally a different title in Process Monitor"
    – aubreypwd
    Commented Dec 13, 2016 at 20:49
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    @AubreyPortwood did you try it? Because I did, and it does create a separate icon and taskbar group (it overlays the icon you select when creating the person).
    – john16384
    Commented Nov 4, 2017 at 18:36
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    Also possible via command line parameters, see related question: superuser.com/questions/377186/…
    – chrki
    Commented Nov 28, 2017 at 19:28
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    Can't find "Add Person" option in settings :(
    – Eugene Mala
    Commented Jan 21, 2021 at 23:45
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    These aren't really "independent": they'll still get merged into the same process. My use-case was I wanted to launch a particular online game from Steam, but even a separate --profile-directory wasn't enough to make the second instance's process not exit immediately if the first instance was already open
    – JamesTheAwesomeDude
    Commented Jul 5, 2021 at 19:36
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I've done that before with a portable version of Chrome.

You could even use Google Chrome Canary (if you're ok with beta versions) as the 2nd one so that it has a different icon, etc.

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  • Works perfectly!
    – Simon Steinberger
    Commented Feb 1, 2017 at 9:40
  • Is it Chrome? I think it's chromium and that's not exactly the same thing.
    – Konstantin
    Commented Sep 1, 2017 at 16:22
  • It's pure Chrome, just portable (by external enforcement of a third party software).
    – LWC
    Commented Nov 29, 2021 at 17:40
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Google Chrome builtin Profiles are a horrible way to have things separated because they have many bugs not fixed in a long time as (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=130656).

The best way to separate things is to create two or more different shortcuts to the Google Chrome Application with different data directories:

  1. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir="c:\user1"
  2. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir="c:\user2"
  3. ...
  4. https://medium.com/linked-helper/how-to-setup-separate-chrome-instance-for-windows-9ac9921b81b3
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  • Note that the equal sign = between --user-data-dir and the specified directory is important! If you use a space, Chrome will open the directory in a new tab instead of using it as a separate data store for the separate browser session.
    – steamer25
    Commented Jul 5 at 1:51
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You can run a separate instance of Chrome on Windows by creating a shortcut on your desktop with a different user-data directory.

 1. Right click on the Chrome short on your desktop and click "Create shortcut"
 2. Right click on the new shortcut "Google Chrome (2)" and click "Properties"
 3. Look for the text box called Target, you'll see the path to the chrome executable
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
 4. Add --user-data-dir="c:\your_dir_name" to the end of the executable
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --user-data-dir="c:\chrome2"

Chrome will automatically create the new user-data directory when you use this shortcut.

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  • This is so much better than any of the other answers with more votes (and the accepted answer which doesn't even answer the right question). Thanks!
    – The111
    Commented Mar 31 at 20:09
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screenshot

You can use the Beta or Dev version of chrome, this is better because you get different icons and can still sync to your account.

I found the details from this article.

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Open your web app in a tab, then [Chrome > ⋮ > More tools... > Create shortcut].

This will open it in a Chrome popup window, which will separate it from the main instance, and provide it with the same favicon as provided by the web app domain. In Win7+ this can be pinned to the taskbar for convenience. Tested to work as of Chrome v72.0.3626.121.

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As of September 2021 OSX (MacOS) Big Sur 11.5.2 the only functional command to open a new Chrome instance as different user is:

 open -n -a "Google Chrome" --args --profile-directory="Profile 2"

The correct profile name can be determined by looking at Profile Path in chrome://version/

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You can also use the mac app Coherence, or any other website to app. https://www.bzgwebs.com/coherence5

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    Not necessarily spam, but not a good answer, since it is OS-specific, and not related to the OP's stated OS.
    – xenoid
    Commented Oct 22, 2017 at 19:29

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