blogd

Using Multiple GitHub Accounts on the Same Computer

13th july, 2025

The official docs on this are kind of complex. Here is what i do instead -

1. Install GitHub-CLI

GitHub-CLI(gh) is the official command-line for GitHub. And we can use it to easily switch git accounts.

2. GitHub-CLI as git credential-helper

Run the following command to set gh as the git credential-helper,

gh auth setup-git

SIDE NOTE:

credential-helpers provide username/password to git whenever we interact with GitHub(push/pull).

• On windows, git-credential-manager is bundled with git and is installed as default credential-helper.
• On linux, we don’t get such helpers by default. I generally end up using SSH authentication there instead.

3. Add your accounts

Login into your github accounts,

gh auth login

4. Switch accounts

To switch to your desired account,

gh auth switch --user <your-username>

5. Configure git name and email on per repo basis

After switching accounts with gh auth switch, you would be able to access respective repos. But git commits will still use the global name and email.

This is a limitation of GitHub-CLI, it does not automatically updates name/email upon switching accounts. As a workaround, i remove my global git name and email using-

git config unset --global user.name
git config unset --global user.email

And for a repo related to account-1, i will go inside that repo and set the name and email once-

git config user.name account-1
git config user.email account-1@example.com

And repeat for other repos as per their related account.

That’s it, Enjoy!

This was a real problem for me. At some point i even had VMs for separate, headache-free, multi-account access.

GitHub-CLI is a nice offering. And i hope switching accounts also automatically configures git name and email in future.

Happy Tweaking!

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