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ForceEphemeralProfiles

  • Article

Enable use of ephemeral profiles

Supported versions

  • On Windows and macOS since 77 or later

Description

Controls whether user profiles are switched to ephemeral mode. An ephemeral profile is created when a session begins, is deleted when the session ends, and is associated with the user's original profile.

If you enable this policy, profiles run in ephemeral mode. This lets users work from their own devices without saving browsing data to those devices. If you enable this policy as an OS policy (by using GPO on Windows, for example), it applies to every profile on the system.

If you disable this policy or don't configure it, users get their regular profiles when they sign in to the browser.

In ephemeral mode, profile data is saved on disk only for the length of the user session. Features like browser history, extensions and their data, web data like cookies, and web databases aren't saved after the browser is closed. This doesn't prevent a user from manually downloading any data to disk, or from saving pages or printing them. If the user has enabled sync, all data is preserved in their sync accounts just like with regular profiles. Users can also use InPrivate browsing in ephemeral mode unless you explicitly disable this.

Supported features

  • Can be mandatory: Yes
  • Can be recommended: No
  • Dynamic Policy Refresh: No - Requires browser restart
  • Per Profile: Yes
  • Applies to a profile that is signed in with a Microsoft account: No

Data type

  • Boolean

Windows information and settings

Group Policy (ADMX) info

  • GP unique name: ForceEphemeralProfiles
  • GP name: Enable use of ephemeral profiles
  • GP path (Mandatory): Administrative Templates/Microsoft Edge
  • GP path (Recommended): N/A
  • GP ADMX file name: MSEdge.admx

Example value

Enabled

Registry settings

  • Path (Mandatory): SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
  • Path (Recommended): N/A
  • Value name: ForceEphemeralProfiles
  • Value type: REG_DWORD

Example registry value

0x00000001

Mac information and settings

  • Preference Key name: ForceEphemeralProfiles
  • Example value:
<true/>

See also