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aftbit • 10/12/2024 • 1 reply • view on HN

I use a little `chrome-new` script to develop (and sometimes take video calls or use buggy apps) against a totally clean fresh Chrome profile, then I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and uMatrix for daily driving.

    #!/bin/sh
    [ -z $CHROME ] && CHROME=chromium
    TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d /dev/shm/chrome-XXXXX)
    $CHROME --user-data-dir=$TMPDIR --no-first-run --no-default-browser-check "$@"
    rm -rf $TMPDIR
The first line lets me override which Chrome version I launch if I want to try instead google-chrome-stable or google-chrome-beta for example. I keep them all installed from the AUR on Arch.

Replies

pushupentry1219 • 10/12/2024

I prefer this way. Much simpler but way more aggressive:

`export HOME=$TMPDIR chrome <args...>`

Will make chrome think that $TMPDIR is $HOME. Keep in mind that means your downloads for example would also be deleted after the rm -rf

This works for most other software too

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