Count active work, not library rows

A stored profile mostly represents configuration and saved data. Opening it starts browser work, and multiple tabs can create more rendering and network activity. Ten lightweight pages and ten complex web applications are different workloads. Record the actual sites and tab count when deciding whether a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro or iMac meets your needs.

Watch the whole browser workload

Memory used by the visible application process excludes some WebKit helper processes. Activity Monitor's memory-pressure view is more informative than a single app's resident-memory number. Check other running applications and swap behavior as well. A test should stop when it would make the user's Mac unresponsive rather than forcing a target profile count.

What the native fixture has demonstrated

A controlled run opened six separate profile hosts with three restored fixture tabs each and passed its isolation and environment checks. These were lightweight pages that we controlled. A larger 15-host test was prepared, but its preflight refused to run under the Mac's existing memory pressure. We therefore do not describe 15 simultaneous profiles as a verified local capacity.

The team server is a separate workload

The isolated server test exercised 30 clients with 15 profiles each: 450 profiles and leases, 3,833 API requests, and no unexpected responses in that run. The server manages metadata and coordination; each user's Mac runs its own browsers. This result is not a 450-browser benchmark, a production service-level guarantee or evidence about every user's machine.

Scale a pilot in steps

Begin with the normal work of one operator, then add active profiles gradually while keeping the same representative pages. Check interaction delays, memory pressure, close-and-save behavior and recovery after restart. Leave room for the other applications people use. Share the hardware, operating system, build and workload with any performance report so someone else can reproduce it.