4. Profiles
A profile is the unit you buy Clout for. Everything else in the product exists to make one, move one, run one or share one.
What a profile is, and why it is not a browser window
A browser window shows you a page. A profile is the whole machine the page thinks it is talking to:
- A fingerprint. The user agent, the screen, the graphics card, the fonts, the core count, the timezone, the language, and six noise channels that perturb what a page reads back from canvas, WebGL, audio, client rects, speech voices and media devices.
- Its own disk. Cookies, local storage, history, extensions and saved logins, in a directory nothing else on your machine shares.
- An exit. The proxy it goes out through, or your own connection if you gave it none.
- An engine version. Which build of Chromium runs it.
Two profiles open on one computer are two different computers as far as a site can tell. Two tabs in one browser are one computer with two tabs, whatever you do with incognito. That difference is the product.
A profile is not a folder of cookies you can copy around. The fingerprint is built at every launch from a record, the browsing data lives in a directory named after the profile id, and the two only go together when Clout puts them together. This matters when you export, when you import, and when you sign in on a second computer, which each get their own section.
The register
The Profiles screen is the fleet: every profile on your account, one to a row. The sidebar down the left is how you cut it up.
| All profiles | Everything that is not in the bin |
| Running profiles | The ones with a browser open right now, counted live |
| Favorites | The ones you starred |
| Folders | Yours to make and nest. A profile can be in more than one |
| Trash bin | Deleted, and still recoverable |
| Proxies | The saved proxy book, not a profile view |
| Team | Who else is on the account |
Groups are a different thing from folders and both exist. A profile has exactly one group, which is AdsPower's own idea and comes across with every import, so a fleet that arrived from AdsPower already has its groups. Folders are ours, a profile can sit in several, and they are what a teammate's access is granted against.
The columns are yours to choose (Manage columns in the toolbar), and the Browser column is worth turning on early: it shows which engine version each profile is pinned to, which is the single most common reason a profile will not start on a different machine.
Creating one
Create profile opens a form, not a dialog: four sections down the left, a live summary on the right, and one button at the bottom.
| Section | What is in it |
|---|---|
| General | Name, group, browser version, user agent, a cookie to seed it with, a note, and the platform accounts this profile signs in to |
| Proxy | The exit. Type, host, port, user, password, and which service checks the address |
| Fingerprint | Screen, location and language, graphics, media, hardware, and the six noise channels |
| Extra | What opens at launch, the privacy switches, and raw launch arguments |
The summary on the right is not decoration. It states what this profile will be created with, field by field, before you press the button, including the parts you did not touch. Read it once on your first profile and you will understand the form better than any explanation here can make you.
The identity comes from this machine, not from anyone's cloud
Creating a profile makes no network call. The identity is drawn from a corpus of real machine fingerprints that ships inside the app, filtered to what is possible on the computer you are drawing it for: a Mac does not get a Windows GPU, and a machine with 8 GB does not claim 2. You do not need AdsPower installed, signed in, or running, and you do not need to be online.
Making more than one at a time
The count accepts 1 to 50. Each profile in a batch mints its own identity. Fifty profiles built from one identity would share a canvas seed, a MAC address and a device name, which is a worse position than fifty defaults, so the form does not offer it.
The browser version
Browser lists the engine versions installed on this computer, and Auto means the newest installed one. Auto is the right answer unless you have a reason: a profile pinned to version 143 cannot start on a machine where 143 is not installed, and pinning it is a decision you carry to every other computer you sign in on. See The two engines for where those versions come from and how to get one.
Templates
Save as a profile template in the header keeps the form as a template you can start from later. A template deliberately does not carry the minted parts of the identity: a profile created from one mints its own user agent, renderer, device name and MAC, so a template is a set of choices rather than a copy of a machine.
The fingerprint, and which parts to touch
Most of the Fingerprint tab should be left exactly as it opens. The defaults are not placeholders; they are what the whole fleet carries, and being unusual is the thing a fingerprint is trying not to be. The three tables below cover the whole form, not only that tab.
| Leave it alone | Why |
|---|---|
| The six noise channels | On. They are what makes two profiles on one machine read as two machines |
| User agent, WebGL vendor and renderer, device name, MAC | Minted together as one coherent machine. Overriding one of them contradicts the rest |
| Cores, RAM | Drawn from real-traffic distributions. A machine does not have 7 cores or 11 GB |
| Media device counts | One camera, one microphone, one speaker. Every profile in the fleet says that, so a different count makes you more distinguishable, not less |
| Re-roll on launch | Off. A new fingerprint every launch is a new computer every launch, which is exactly what a site watches for |
| Safe to set | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name, group and note | Yours. They never reach a page |
| Proxy | The one setting you should always make deliberately. See below |
| Timezone, language, location | Leave on Based on IP and they follow the proxy, which is what you want. Set them by hand only when you know the exit's location better than the lookup does |
| Screen resolution | Random by default, which is right. Real makes every profile on one computer report the same screen |
| Opens on start | The URLs a launch opens with |
| Only with a reason | |
|---|---|
| Disabled fonts, cipher blacklist, launch arguments, port scan, Do Not Track | Each one is real and each one reaches the browser. They are also each a way to be the only visitor on a site with that combination |
One rule covers all of it: a fingerprint is a claim about a computer, and every part of it has to agree with every other part. The form fills a consistent one in for you. Every edit you make is you promising you know better.
Proxies, and why one profile wants one exit
A profile with no proxy goes out through your own connection, and the address your other profiles use. If you run more than a handful of accounts, that single address is the join that links them, and no fingerprint work survives it.
So: one profile, one exit, and keep it. A profile that has been coming from Frankfurt for two months and arrives from Singapore tomorrow has done something no real person does. That is a much louder signal than any canvas hash.
Where the proxy lives. You can type it on the profile itself, in the Proxy section of the form, or keep it in the Proxies book and attach it. The book is worth using once you have more than a few: it stores the credential once, tells you which profiles use each entry, and can check them.
Check connection egresses through the saved credential and records what came back, so a check is a real request rather than a ping. A book of a thousand endpoints takes minutes to work through and reports as it goes.
Refresh IP rotates the session token inside a proxy credential, for providers that carry one, so the profile comes out of a different exit node next time it opens. Nothing about the profile's identity changes. Two things are refused rather than guessed at: a credential with no session parameter cannot be rotated, and a profile that is open right now is left alone.
A password you type into the proxy fields is never written into the profile document that syncs. It is held with the profile's other credentials.
Opening and closing
Start on a row launches the profile: Clout builds the fingerprint from the record, writes the session and credentials the browser needs into the profile directory, and starts the engine. The row shows it running, and the Running profiles view counts it.
Two things a launch can refuse, both with a sentence saying what to do:
- The engine that profile pins is not on this machine. The launch parks rather than failing, a strip appears at the top of the window, and Install fetches that exact version and opens the profile when it lands.
- The profile is in the bin. Restore it first.
Closing the browser is how you stop a profile. What the browser saved (new cookies, a solved challenge, a rotated token) is read back into the record on the way out, so the next launch starts where the last one finished.
Editing a profile afterwards
Edit opens the same form with the profile in it. Every value comes from the profile that exists, so the screen cannot show you a default where your profile has a value.
What you can change: the name, the note, the group, the tags, the proxy, the URLs it opens on, the launch arguments, which service checks its IP, whether the cache is cleared when the browser closes, and whether the page may ask for your location.
Clearing the cache on close does not sign the profile out. It removes what the network hands back, images and scripts and the like, and leaves the cookies, the local storage and the saved logins where they are. Signing a profile out is a different act and this is not a quiet version of it.
Location has a limit worth knowing. A profile created here reads this setting at every start. An imported profile builds its geolocation from the record it was imported with and never looks at the setting, so the control is locked on those with the reason on it, rather than accepting a change that would do nothing.
The browser version can be changed on a profile created here, and not on an imported one, which is the same rule as the fingerprint and for the same reason. Changing it changes the Chromium version a site sees, so it is a decision rather than a preference. See The two engines for where versions come from and what a pin costs you on a second machine.
The Identity tab is drawn and locked, with the reason on it. There are two different reasons, and the difference matters.
Changing many at once
Select the profiles and press Edit selected profiles. Every field starts on "leave as it is" and stays there unless you move it, and a field left alone is never sent. That is the whole design of the screen: a bulk editor that sends every box would empty a thousand notes because one box was blank.
Five fields: the proxy, the pages it opens on, the note, whether the cache is cleared on close, and the location setting. The dialog lists exactly what it is about to write before you press Apply, and where a field reaches only part of your selection it says so with the numbers, rather than reporting success on profiles it never sent anything to.
Two things a bulk edit cannot do yet, and the app says so rather than offering them: launch arguments, because the launch takes those from the command that starts it, and the IP checker, because both of its values reach the same page.
An imported profile will not let you change its fingerprint
If the profile came from AdsPower, or from Dolphin, GoLogin or Multilogin through the AdsPower format, the app says:
Imported from AdsPower. The identity is fixed. Every start rebuilds this fingerprint from the profile's launch record, so a change made here would not survive a launch. The engine refuses it and there is no override. Import the profile again to change what a site sees.
That is exactly what happens, and the refusal is in the engine rather than in the screen, so the command line and the Local API refuse it identically. There is no force flag. The reason it is a hard rule rather than a warning is that a half-applied fingerprint edit is a browser presenting a machine that does not exist, and you would find out from the site rather than from us.
The browser version is fixed for the same reason. An imported profile requires its pinned version. SunBrowser 143, 144, 145, 146, 147 and 151 are published for macOS, Windows x64 and Linux x64. If the required version is not available for your computer, the app reports the missing engine; it does not silently move the profile to a newer identity.
A profile created here says something different
Created here. The identity is read only on this screen. The engine would take a change to these, but this screen reads the values the fingerprint produced rather than the choices behind them, so it will not offer a form it would have to fill in by guessing. Create a new profile to get a different identity.
Two other locks cover the whole form: a profile with a browser open cannot be edited, and neither can anything while your account is read only (see Your subscription).
Saving sends only what you changed. An untouched form saves nothing at all, so opening a profile to look at it cannot move it under a teammate.
The trash bin, and getting a profile back
Move to trash bin, on a row's menu or in the toolbar (Cmd+Del with rows selected), puts a profile in the bin. It stops counting against your plan, it will not open, and nothing is destroyed:
They stop counting against your plan and will not open. Nothing is deleted. Open the trash bin in the sidebar and press Restore to put them back in their group.
Restore puts a profile back in the group it always named, with its folders, its tags and its browsing data intact.
Delete permanently, on a row in the bin, and Empty trash bin in the sidebar are the one irreversible pair in the product. They remove the profile directory: cookies, logins, history. Both ask you to type the number of profiles you are destroying, which is a rung no other confirmation in the app uses, so that the one act with no way back does not look like all the others.
Nothing empties the bin on a timer. A profile stays there until somebody purges it. If you are short of headroom on your plan, the bin is the first place to look, because a binned profile does not count and a forgotten one is free.