👥 Application Profiles

April 27, 2026 · View on GitHub

Application Profiles let you run multiple independent Komai instances on the same machine.

See a 🖼️ Screenshot of the application profile switcher.

Each profile has its own:

  • login/session
  • settings
  • local database/cache
  • secret storage entries

Use this for setups like work and personal without mixing data.

Open the Profile UI

You can manage profiles from:

  • Application Settings -> Application Profiles
  • room list user menu (right-click your avatar/settings button) -> Open Profile Switcher
  • running komai (or komai -p "") without an explicit profile opens the switcher whenever profiles are not just default

Create and Launch

In Application Profiles:

  • click Create new
  • enter a profile name (for example work, personal, dev_build)
  • on native Linux, leave Create desktop launcher enabled for non-default profiles if you want reliable app badges and launcher grouping
  • click Create and Launch

Komai launches a separate app instance with that profile.

Launch Existing Profiles

In the profile card list, click a card to launch that profile in a new window.

The standalone switcher window closes after a successful launch.

Delete Profiles

Each profile card has a delete action with confirmation.

Deleting a profile removes its profile-scoped data, including:

  • profile config/session/state files under ~/.config/komai/profiles/<profile-id>/
  • local profile database under ~/.local/share/komai/profiles/<profile-id>/
  • profile secrets for the active secret provider

CLI Behavior

komai             # opens switcher unless only `default` exists
komai -p work     # always launch profile "work" directly
komai -p ""       # same selector-mode behavior as bare `komai`

Profile names follow the same validation rules as -p names documented in Settings -> Profile Location. In practice, that means names like work, personal, dev_build, or work-2 are valid, while names containing . are not.

Reliable App Badges With Multiple Profiles

On native Linux, the packaged default profile launcher already has a stable app/launcher identity. Non-default profiles only get reliable app-icon/taskbar badges when they are launched from their own desktop launcher.

The Create Application Profile dialog offers this by default for new non-default profiles. If you already have a profile, create its launcher explicitly:

komai profiles launcher create work

This writes:

~/.local/share/applications/cc.etke.komai.profile.work.desktop

Remove it later with:

komai profiles launcher remove work

After creating the launcher, Komai can use that profile-specific desktop/app identity even when you start it with komai -p work, because startup checks for an installed matching launcher entry. Starting from the created desktop entry is still convenient, but not required for badge targeting.

Manual desktop-entry example:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.5
Type=Application
Name=Komai (work)
Comment=Desktop client for Matrix
Exec=/absolute/path/to/komai -p work %u
Icon=cc.etke.komai
Categories=Network;InstantMessaging;Qt;
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=true

Keep the filename aligned with the profile desktop ID:

cc.etke.komai.profile.work.desktop