title: C# Selenium Start Chrome with Different User Profile
body: <p>For the past 2 days, I've been trying to find a way to start Chrome with a different profile but to no avail.
  No matter what I do, the profile that Selenium loads for chrome is always some temporary profile like "C:\Users\DARKBO~1\AppData\Local\Temp\scoped_dir14308_25046\Default"</p>
  
  <p>I have tried the following code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
  options.AddArgument(@"user-data-dir=C:\SeleniumProfiles\Default");
  
  IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
  driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("chrome://version");
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>First I tried using the directories for the profiles directly from the Chrome folder, didn't work. Then I created a new folder and moved the profiles there, I've tried doing this both in C:\ and in D:\ . No difference whatsoever.
  I've tried running the user-data-dir argument both like it currently is in the code and with -- in front of it. I've tried using double backslashes without the @ symbol, still nothing. No matter what I do the profile directory is always the Selenium temp directory.</p>
  
  <p>P.S. The current C:\SeleniumProfiles directory I created through the command prompt using the <code>chrome user-data-dir=C:\SeleniumProfiles</code> command</p>
  
  <p>P.S. 2: My mistake was very simple, I forgot to put the options in the constructor of the new driver. And as Tarun made it clear, <code>user-data-dir</code> only gives Chrome the directory that contains the profiles, then we need to use <code>profile-directory</code> argument to give the subdirectory that contains the needed profile.</p>