The Startup Interruption
Google Chrome supports multiple user profiles, allowing different people (or a single person separating work and personal life) to maintain completely separate bookmarks, history, and extensions within the same browser installation. If you have created more than one profile, Chrome alters its default startup behavior. Instead of instantly opening to your homepage or last open tabs, Chrome launches a large, centered “Profile Picker” window, forcing you to manually select which user account you want to use before it actually loads the browser. For users who primarily use one profile and only occasionally use the second, this mandatory extra click on every startup is highly annoying.
Bypassing the Picker
To speed up your workflow and disable the Profile Picker window on startup, forcing Google Chrome to launch directly into your primary profile, you must adjust a specific setting within the picker itself.
You cannot easily disable this from the main Chrome settings menu; the toggle is hidden on the startup screen. Close all open instances of Google Chrome. Launch Chrome so that the large “Who’s using Chrome?” Profile Picker window appears on your screen. Do not immediately click on a profile. Instead, look at the very bottom right corner of this window. You will see a small checkbox explicitly labelled Show on startup. Click this checkbox to completely uncheck it. Now, click on your primary profile to open the browser. The next time you close and reopen Chrome, it will completely bypass the picker screen and instantly load the profile you just used. If you ever need to switch profiles later, simply click your profile icon in the top right corner of the browser toolbar.