Install Casement and allow Accessibility, click its menu-bar icon, open Chrome profiles and tick the profiles you want. Each gets a Dock icon with the profile's photo. Clicking it brings that profile's window forward, and clicking again cycles through its windows. A new window opens only when none is open.
Before you start
You need Casement installed with Accessibility allowed (see how to set up Casement) and Google Chrome with at least two profiles. This feature costs $9 once for up to three Macs, and has a 7-day free trial.
Decide which profiles deserve a Dock icon. Most people choose the ones they open several times a day, such as work, a main personal profile and a few client profiles.
Steps
- Click the Casement icon in the menu bar.
- Open Chrome profiles.
- Tick each profile that should have a Dock icon. Casement uses the profile's own photo for the icon.
- Click one of the new Dock icons. Chrome opens that profile, or returns to it if it is already open.
- Click the icon again to cycle through that profile's windows if it has several.
- To remove an icon, untick the profile in the same list.
Check that it worked
Open two profiles. Click one icon, then the other. You should land in the right window each time without a new window appearing.
Close all windows of one profile and click its icon. A new window should open, because none exists.
If something goes wrong
- The icon shows a generic picture. Set a photo or colour for the profile in Chrome, then reopen Casement's list.
- A new window opens each time. Check that Casement has Accessibility and that you are clicking the Casement icon, not a launcher you made earlier. Remove old launchers.
- A profile is missing from the list. Open Chrome with that profile once, then refresh the list.
What to do next
Read Chrome profile Dock icons and the problem page you can never tell which Chrome profile is which. To open a profile from Terminal instead, see this guide.
Tips for choosing which profiles to pin
Pin the profiles you open several times a day, not every profile you have. Six Dock icons for Chrome are easier to read than twelve. If you have a work profile and many client profiles, pin work and your three busiest clients, and open the others from Chrome's own profile menu.
Give each profile a clear photo or colour. The Dock icon uses it, so a distinctive picture makes the right icon obvious at a glance. A plain grey avatar looks the same as every other plain grey avatar.
A worked example
Maya runs a small agency. She keeps a "Studio" profile for her own email and tools, and one profile for each of four clients so that logins never mix. Before, she clicked Chrome in the Dock, guessed, and often found herself in the wrong client's workspace. She pinned all five profiles in Casement and gave each a coloured photo. Now one click lands her in the right profile, and a second click cycles through that client's windows. She no longer opens duplicate windows by accident.
The saving is a few seconds each time, and a handful of avoided mistakes a week.
Questions people ask
Does it work with Chrome profiles I already have?
Yes. Casement reads your existing profiles.
Can I use it on two Macs?
The licence covers up to three Macs you use.
Try Casement
Casement is a menu-bar app for Mac that puts each Chrome profile in the Dock as its own icon and adds snap layouts, hover-to-focus, a window switcher, Dock window lists, a drop shelf and display controls..