If you share a computer and want separate bookmarks/extensions without multiple OS users, using multiple web browser profiles is the solution. In Windows, creating a new browser profile will create an app launcher for you, but in Linux you have to do it manually.

In KDE Plasma, you can use kmenuedit to create a new app launcher, however it cannot edit right click actions like “New Window” and “New Incognito Window”.

Instead lets copy /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop to our local directory.

~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome-chris.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Actions=NewWindow;NewPrivateWindow;
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
Comment=Access the Internet
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --profile-directory="Profile 1" %U
GenericName=Web Browser
Icon=google-chrome-avatar-generic-green
MimeType=text/html;image/webp;application/xml;
Name=Google Chrome (Chris)
Path=
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=google_chrome_chris

[Desktop Action NewWindow]
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --profile-directory="Profile 1"
Name=New Window

[Desktop Action NewPrivateWindow]
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --profile-directory="Profile 1" --incognito
Name=New Incognito Window

The --profile-directory will either be Default or Profile 1. Visit ~/.config/google-chrome/ to check.

The StartupWMClass should tell the window manager (KWin) and taskbar widget (Plasma TaskManager) to not group these windows with the normal google_chrome windows.

You’ll notice that I set the icon to an unknown icon. That’s because I created a few custom icons to match chrome’s builtin profile icons.

Icon=google-chrome-avatar-generic-green

Save the following SVG icons to:

~/.local/share/icons/google-chrome-avatar-generic-green.svg

Chrome:

Once you’ve finished creating the .desktop file, open up the Konsole terminal app and run the following command to refresh the application list.

kbuildsycoca5

Finally drag the app to your panel’s task manager widget to pin it there.

Firefox

The process for Firefox is the same as Chrome, however the firefox-chris.desktop file should be based on /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop instead.

[Desktop Entry]
Actions=new-window;new-private-window;
Comment=Browse the World Wide Web
Exec=firefox --class="firefox-chris" -P chris %u
GenericName=Web Browser
Icon=mozilla-firefox-avatar-green
Keywords=Internet;WWW;Browser;Web;Explorer
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rss+xml;application/rdf+xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/chrome;video/webm;application/x-xpinstall;
Name=Firefox (Chris)
NoDisplay=false
Path[$e]=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=0
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
Version=1.0
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=
X-MultipleArgs=false
StartupWMClass=firefox-chris

[Desktop Action new-window]
Exec=firefox --class="firefox-chris" -P chris -new-window
Name=Open a New Window

[Desktop Action new-private-window]
Exec=firefox --class="firefox-chris" -P chris -private-window
Name=Open a New Private Window

The -P profileId argument can be determined by entering about:profiles in the Firefox addressbar. It should be either default or name.

You also need to pass the same value as StartupWMClass to firefox in --class.

Here’s a couple of icons based on Chrome’s profile avatars. You can easily recolor them with Inkscape.

Firefox: