# Deleting a browser profile while it is running > Delete a running profile in Mosaic and its browser closes first. If the browser will not close, the profile stays on the list, with its Stop button. Source: https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/trash-closes-the-browser ## Trashing a profile closes its browser, at every door Delete a running profile in Mosaic and its browser closes first. If the browser will not close, the profile stays on the list, with its Stop button. ![A deleted profile has no browser left open, beside a screenshot: the Mosaic trash: deleted profiles kept for 30 days, restorable one by one](https://mosaicbrowser.com/covers/trash-closes-the-browser.webp) If you delete a browser profile while it is running in Mosaic, its browser closes first and then the profile goes to the trash. If the browser refuses to close, the profile is not trashed at all: it stays on the list, where it still has a Stop button. Until we fixed it, deleting a project closed nothing, and the other five ways in treated a browser that would not close as a success, so a window could stay open behind a row that had already disappeared. ## The bug, as it was reported The report was short and angry: moving a profile to the trash left its browser open. It was correct, and worse than it sounds. The row vanished, so the window still on screen belonged to a profile the interface said did not exist. That window kept its proxy session. It kept writing into a cookie jar nothing would read again. And there was no row left anywhere with a Stop button on it. A profile is a fingerprint, a proxy and a cookie jar that agree with each other. A browser that outlives its row is still all three, still online, and now unmanaged. For anyone keeping accounts apart, that is the last thing you want running unnoticed. ## Six doors, three behaviours Mosaic can be driven from its window, from the local REST API and over MCP, and all three can trash a profile. When we listed every path, there were six, and they did three different things: | Door | What it did before | | --- | --- | | IPC `profiles.delete` | stopped the browser, swallowed a failure | | IPC `profiles.bulkDelete` | stopped the browser, swallowed a failure | | REST `DELETE /profiles/:id` | stopped the browser, swallowed a failure | | REST `POST /profiles/bulk/delete` | stopped the browser, swallowed a failure | | MCP `delete_profile` | stopped the browser, swallowed a failure | | Delete project (IPC, REST, MCP) | did not stop anything | The project doors were plainly broken. `store.deleteProject` trashes every profile in the project, one level below where anyone had looked for a running browser. The other five were broken more quietly. Each one called the stop like this: ``` await launcher.stop(id).catch(() => undefined) ``` That line turns "this browser will not close" into a clean success. The caller got a 200, the row went away, and the window stayed. Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer. [How it works: Local first](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/local-first) ## One implementation, and a failure that costs the trash The fix has two halves. First, there is now exactly one piece of code allowed to trash a profile: `src/main/engine/trash.ts`. Every door calls it, the project doors included. It is the only caller of `store.trashProfile`, `deleteProfile` and `deleteProject`. Second, the failure mode is inverted. If a stop fails, the trash is what gets refused, not the browser. The profile stays on the list, still described, still stoppable. Refusing is something you can recover from; a hidden browser is not. Every caller gets back `{ trashed, stopped, failures }`, with profile names in it, never a bare `{ ok: true }`. We measured it twice on our own machine. A profile launched through the app ran as pid 77661. `profiles.bulkDelete` answered "Moved 1 profile to the trash, closing 1 browser." and `ps -p 77661` found nothing. Then a project holding a running profile, pid 78268: `projects.delete` returned `{ ok: true, stopped: 1 }`, and that process was gone too. Before the change, the second one left the browser running. ![The Mosaic trash with two deleted profiles, each with Restore and Delete](https://mosaicbrowser.com/shots/trash.png) *The trash keeps profiles for 30 days by default* ## The check found a door the fix missed We wrote a build check for this rule, `check:trash-stops`. It fails the build if anything outside `trash.ts` calls the store's trash methods directly. Its first run named two places the fix had not reached. One was `POST /profiles/bulk/delete`, a real sixth door we had not counted when we started. The other was `launcher.retireIfOneTime`, which retires a one-time profile from inside the cleanup that runs after its browser has already exited. That one is legitimate: sending it through the shared code would call stop from inside stop. So it carries a `trash-ok:` marker with its reason, on that line only. A whole-file exemption would have let a second direct call slip in beside it unnoticed. ## Deleting a running profile from the window now The confirmation counts the open browsers in your selection and says so before you agree: "3 of them have a browser open, and those are closed first". The row menu also stopped greying out Move to trash on a running profile. Two doors were giving two answers to one question, and the honest answer is yes, and the browser closes. This matters more once an assistant is driving profiles for you, as in [an AI assistant that runs your profiles](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/ai-assistant-runs-profiles): a model that deletes a profile cannot see a window left open on the screen. Everything here stays on your computer ([what is kept locally](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/local-first) has the list), and the reasons a stray session links accounts are in [how to manage multiple accounts without getting linked](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/how-to-manage-multiple-accounts-without-getting-linked). ## Questions ### What happens if I delete a Mosaic profile while its browser is running? Mosaic closes that browser first and then moves the profile to the trash. The confirmation tells you how many of the selected profiles have a browser open before you agree. ### What if the browser will not close? Then the profile is not trashed. It stays on the list with its Stop button, and the answer names it under failures, because hiding a browser that is still running cannot be undone from the interface. ### Does deleting a project close the browsers of the profiles in it? Yes. Deleting a project trashes every profile in it, and it goes through the same code as trashing one profile, so each running browser is closed first. ### Can I get a trashed profile back? Yes. The trash keeps profiles for 30 days by default, and Restore puts one back on the list with its fingerprint, proxy and cookie jar. ## Related [Local first: your profiles stay on your computer](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/local-first): Mosaic has no cloud copy of your profiles. Profiles, cookies and proxies stay on your computer, encrypted on disk, with app lock, daily backups and a trash. [How to manage multiple accounts without getting them linked](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/how-to-manage-multiple-accounts-without-getting-linked): Accounts get linked by shared cookies, IPs, fingerprints and habits. Give each its own profile, exit and history, then test it before you trust it. [Letting an AI assistant run browser profiles over MCP](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/ai-assistant-runs-profiles): Mosaic's MCP server lets Claude or any MCP client create, start and drive browser profiles. Three faults we found when a model was the caller. [Provider accounts: one gateway line, one exit per profile](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/proxy-providers): Paste your proxy seller's gateway line once and Mosaic mints a separate session for every profile, so each one browses from its own exit address.  [Chrome 136 stopped remote debugging on your default profile](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/chrome-136-remote-debugging): Since Chrome 136, --remote-debugging-port is ignored on the default profile. Pass --user-data-dir with a folder of its own and the port opens.   ## Mosaic, on your own computer The browser this blog is about: its own Chromium, fingerprints from real machines and a proxy exit per profile. Free holds 3 profiles. Pro is $49 a month for any number. Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer.