Can I put two chrome (different users) on my launcher?

It is quite simple to do this in Windows but not the same in Ubuntu.

For Ubuntu, I found two ways. Personally I recommend method 2 because you don't need to install anything. It also allows you to access the second profile from "Activities" (Ubuntu) without using any commands.

Please note that either way you choose, you have to know YOUR_PROFILE_NAME.

YOUR_PROFILE_NAME is normally Default for the first profile you created. The second profile is named Profile\ 1. The third is Profile\ 2, and so on (You can also give custom names for profiles). You can identify which profile is currently loaded by opening chrome://version inside Chrome and looking at Profile Path.

1. Follow Filippo's answer but change the Command to:

   google-chrome --profile-directory=YOUR_PROFILE_NAME  
   

2. Put this code in any text editor and name it anything .desktop.

   #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
   [Desktop Entry]
   Version=1.0
   Type=Application
   Terminal=false
   Icon[en_US]=google-chrome
   Exec=google-chrome --profile-directory=YOUR_PROFILE_NAME
   Name[en_US]=Chrome-YOUR_PROFILE_NAME
   Name=Chrome-YOUR_PROFILE_NAME
   Icon=google-chrome
   

   Right-click the file. Open "Properties". Go to "Permissions" tab. Click Allow executing file as program.

   You can keep the .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/ so that your Application Launcher can locate it easily. Now simply press super and search for Chrome-YOUR_PROFILE_NAME (value given for Name), you will find the second profile appearing in the search results!

This is what I did to achieve the same thing:

sudo apt-get install gnome-panel
gnome-desktop-item-edit ~/Desktop/ --create-new

to create the first "Application Launcher" with the Command:

google-chrome --user-data-dir=/home/XXXXX/.config/google-chrome/Profile\ 1

Then drag the icon created from the desktop to the launcher. Repeat for the Profile 2.

All the other answers have a caveat: the shortcut will open tabs or new windows and group them with the official Google Chrome shortcut.

I wanted to make the new shortcut to open windows in its own icon, so I can place both icons in my dock and easily switch between the different Chromes.

I discovered that you basically need to use the flags --class and --user-data-dir to Chrome's executable.

So I wrote a script to make this automatically and if you want to try (don't worry, it won't perform any action before you confirm -- unless you use --force), just run:

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/felipecassiors/dotfiles/master/scripts/create_alternative_chrome_shortcut.sh")"

If you want to know more about it, take a look here.

The only caveat is that since it uses --user-data-dir instead of --profile-directory, the new Chrome instance will act like a fresh new. This is needed because of this bug.

In the end, you'll end up with something like this:

[