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Profiles are where K-Meleon stores user information including preferences, bookmarks, cookies, passwords, and browsing history. When you start K-Meleon for the first time it will create a profile. Your default profile directory's name will likely include a randomized string of numbers to improve security. To open your profile folder, launch K-Meleon and choose Edit > Configuration > Profile Directory. For information on how the various files in your profile handle features like Bookmarks, refer to the MigratingProfiles page.

Change the profile's location

K-Meleon profile locations can be set in several ways:

• The official default location will be in the Application Data folder.
• The K-Meleon/profile.ini file sets a specific location for the profile folder. All portable installs of K-Meleon will use this method.
• Command-line flags will override the profile.ini location.

- Official default profile location

Since version 1.0, K-Meleon stores its profiles in your Application Data (%AppData%) directory by default. This is to ensure that K-Meleon has the necessary privileges to write to its profile directory on modern NT-based Windows operating systems (NT/2000/XP/Vista) which are the most common today. If you installed K-Meleon from one of the official installers, this is the default location.

The location of the %AppData% directory depends on your specific Windows version:

Windows 98/Me

C:\Windows\Application Data\

Windows NT

C:\WinNT\Profiles\<user name>\Application Data\

Windows 2000/XP

C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\

Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10

C:\Users\<user name>AppData\

To set a different location for your profiles, you have the following options:

- Portable or custom profile location

You can set the profile location through a K-Meleon/profile.ini file. This is a standard text file that any text editor can open and modify. If you are using a portable installation including a current release from the active branch, this file will be present upon installation. If you would like to use the current branch with the default directory explained above, simply delete the file.

If you install an official release of K-Meleon using the setup program, you are given the option to locate your profiles in the K-Meleon installation directory (which is the classic behavior) instead of the %AppData% directory. When you are asked to select the components to install, simply uncheck the option "Multi-user Profiles". The setup program will then create a file called profile.ini (which is a simple text file) in your K-Meleon installation directory (where k-meleon.exe resides).

By default, profile.ini has the following contents (an empty profile.ini has the same effect):

[profile]
path=Profiles
isRelative=1

The value of the variable path specifies the location of the folder which contains your profiles. If the variable isRelative is set to 1, the value of path is taken relative to the K-Meleon installation directory. In the above case, your profiles will be located in the subfolder K-Meleon/Profiles/ folder. Otherwise, if isRelative is set to 0, the value of path must be a fully qualified path.

- Command line options

You can set the profile location through the -profilesDir command-line switch. This switch overrides K-Meleon/profile.ini/ but will need a profile.ini in its target directory. See command-line options for more details.

Back up a profile

It's recommended to back up your profile to protect your data. Because the profile is contained within a single folder, there are several ways to create a backup. If you regularly backup the files on your system, then you are already creating profile backups. If you are using a cloud service (like DropBox), you can assign it to back up your profile folder and then even sync your browser across multiple computers.

There is also a macro from James D to backup a profile and a more complex extension available on KMEXT that automatically creates backups. Refer to the forum for more information on automatic backups: http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?9,108127,111280

To manually create a backup:

1. Copy the entire profile folder. If you're not sure where your profile is located, open K-Meleon, select Edit > Configuration > Profile Directory to open it in the file manager, and go up one directory.
2. In the file manager, navigate to another folder in your computer or, even better, external media like a USB flash drive.
3. Paste the profile folder.

And to restore from a backup:

1. Open the Profiles/ directory where your profiles are stored.
2. Close K-Meleon.
3. Rename your current, damaged profile. For example, if your profile was named "xyz.default" you could rename it to "xyz.default_damaged" and K-Meleon would no longer use that profile.
4. Copy and paste your profile backup into the Profiles/ folder.
5. Restart K-Meleon. Using the example name from earlier, it would ignore the "xyz.default_damaged" profile and use the restored "xyz.default" profile.

Multiple profiles

By default, K-Meleon will create a single profile. You can create as many additional profiles as you wish. This can be useful if you need different setups for different users, for locked down "private" browsing, for accessing the internet on a metered data connection, or for testing certain web features. To create a new profile, select Edit > Manage Profiles... in K-Meleon. This will launch the Profile Manager.