Installing Multiple Opera Instances With Separate Profiles on Mac

Update 2011-01-28: From Opera 11.01 and onward, the -csp command line hook should be used instead of the PrefsSuffix method described below. See Daniel Aleksandersen's multi-installation blog entry for full details.

If you're an avid Opera snapshot downloader, you've probably bumped into a situation where you want to install an Opera build with a clean profile, rather than having it reuse an already existing profile.

At first sight, there's no easy way to do so, but luckily enough, there's a handy command line hook that helps you out. A quick step-by-step guide to explain how you can install 2 Opera instances with separate profiles:

  1. Install the first Opera instance in the Applications folder
  2. Rename it to Opera_xxx
  3. Install the second Opera instance in the Applications folder
  4. Rename it to Opera_yyy
  5. Open up Terminal (can be found in the Utilities folder)
  6. Type cd /Applications/Opera_yyy.app/Contents/Resources/ and hit enter
  7. Then type echo "Opera_yyy" >> PrefsSuffix and close the terminal
  8. Done!

If you launch Opera_xxx and Opera_yyy now, they will each run with their own profile. Of course, you can adjust the file name and profile strings to your liking :-)