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Comment by thinker5555 | Hacker News Reader

I've seen the "workspaces" thing in a few different browsers now. I know Vivaldi and Arc have them, and it sounds like it's a separate thing from profiles, but I don't quite grok what the difference is between workspaces and profiles. Can anyone help enlighten me? If you use both workspaces and profiles, what do you do differently between them?

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I use workspaces in Vivaldi and they are pretty much a set of tabs that I can switch as a set, but all under the same profile. As an example, in my dev workspace I have GitHub, localhost, and a few other things I might need. In another workspace in have Google calendar, Jira, gmail, etc… I can switch workspaces and it will switch all of the current tabs in my browser.

But, I’m logged in, say, in the same GitHub or Google account across workspace.

Profiles on the other hand (I’ve used those on Arc) change where you are logged in… so I can be logged in to my work gmail on one profile, and to my personal gmail on another.

Personally I don’t find profiles that useful just for the fact that I simply use different browsers for personal and work… but a use case for profiles is, for example, to be signed in as admin and user to your local dev web application and test things between the two just by changing tabs instead of having to logout and login

Workspace is mainly just managing Tabs. While Profiles are separating all settings, including addons, passwords, bookmarks, etc.

This is the best and simplest answer.

One might think of them as virtual desktops.

Could I think of profiles as virtual desktops too?

Different user logins

Doesn't FF have them as well? Or maybe it's an extension.

it's just a group of tabs. absolutely nothing else. profiles offer settings (proxy, etc) and state (cookies, etc) isolation.

it's the same as opening a new window for me. meh.

Arc spaces have transient and pinned tabs, which in turn can be organized as needed into folders. Some tabs are actually multi-tab (split screen). The folders themselves have a neat feature whereby active tabs can be shown while hiding inactive tabs located in the same folder. I can also switch to a specific space with a user defined hotkey, and customize the color of each workspace. Each workspace can have its own profile (and history) or you can share profiles between workspaces. You choose.

None of those on their own are groundbreaking, but all together they make for a compelling differentiator (for me anyways, but I have ADHD so prioritize different things than most).

Describing all that as "absolutely nothing [other than a new window]" is not accurate at all.

thanks for the excellent description... but the question was how it's different from profiles, which is used for isolation and settings change. what you described is still nothing more than moving windows around.

I don't know what to say to that. I just described 5 or so features that are objectively more than simply "moving windows around".

Maybe it's because I wasn't clear that many of those features work on per workspace basis - transient tabs (unique to each workspace), unique folder organization features (customized for each workspace), built in split screen (again - with custom arrangements per workspace), hotkey switching between workspaces, different color theme per workspace (so it's easy to know which workspace I'm in, or select another window quickly with Mission Control).

Then there's the fact that profiles are a separate thing from workspaces so you can mix and match profiles to workspaces according to your needs. So you can have three workspace and have two share a single profile.

If those features aren't compelling to you that's fine. Just say so. But please comment constructively or not at all. I genuinely have no interest in trying to "sell" anyone on this workflow. I was just answering the question.

>what you described is still nothing more than moving windows around.

Ok, even if that were true (it objectively isn't), I like wrangling less windows. How's that? Good enough for you? Why would I want four windows open, when I can have one or two (did I mention that I have ADHD)?

If it helps, you can think of workspaces like another level of tabs. Tabs are objectively good right? Yet everything you can do with a tab can be done with a window. Right?

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