How to Keep Chrome Profiles from Merging Work and Home

Your work bookmarks are showing up at home, or your personal passwords are being offered on the office laptop. Profiles do not merge on their own; it happens when the same Google account is signed in with sync on in both places, or when one profile is doing both jobs. A profile per account, each synced to only that account, keeps them apart.

Add a second profile

Click your profile icon in the top right of Chrome, then Add. Name it Work or Home, pick a color so the windows are distinguishable, and click Done. A new window opens for that profile with its own bookmarks, extensions, passwords, history, and cookies.

Sign each profile into the matching account

In the new window, click the profile icon, then Sign in to Chrome (or Turn on sync), and sign in with the account that belongs to that profile. Do the same in the other profile with the other account. Sync then carries each account's data only into its own profile.

Decline sync for the other account

Signing into a Gmail tab does not merge anything by itself, but accepting the Turn on sync prompt that follows pulls that account's bookmarks and passwords into the current profile. Decline it, or switch to the other profile for that account. To check which account a profile syncs, open Settings, You and Google.

Pin a shortcut for each profile

Chrome creates a desktop shortcut for each profile on Windows. If it did not, click the profile icon, then the gear icon, then the three-dot menu on the profile card and Add desktop shortcut. On a Mac, keep a window from each profile open and pick it from the Dock, or turn on Show on startup in the same profile manager so Chrome asks which profile to open.

Move stray data across, once

If bookmarks already crossed over, open the Bookmark manager in the wrong profile with Ctrl + Shift + O (Mac: Cmd + Option + B), click its three-dot menu, then Export bookmarks, and delete them there. In the right profile, open Settings, Import bookmarks and settings and pick the exported file.

If your work account is managed. An organization can force a managed profile with its own policies, extensions, and restrictions, and you cannot sign that account into an unmanaged profile. For a one-off session on someone else's computer use Guest from the profile menu instead, which saves nothing when the window closes.