Account Switcher
One menu bar icon for switching between accounts in Claude Desktop, Claude Code (terminal)
and Codex. Useful when you have a work subscription and a personal one and keep hitting limits
on one of them.
Windows: a preview port lives in windows/ —
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berkboz/account-switcher/main/windows/install.ps1 | iex
Install
Pick one. All three install the same app: the DMG into /Applications, the other two into
~/Applications, and open the setup window.
Download — get AccountSwitcher-<version>.dmg from
Releases, open it and drag
Account Switcher to Applications.
Terminal — one line, no clone needed:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berkboz/account-switcher/main/install.sh | zsh
From source — needs Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install):
git clone https://github.com/berkboz/account-switcher.git
cd account-switcher
./install.sh
Requires macOS 13 or later. The app drives two free helpers —
claude-swap for Claude Code and
codex-auth for Codex. The setup window installs them for
you when their prerequisites (uv, Node.js) are present. Nothing
touches your accounts until you click something.
First run
The setup window lists Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Codex with their state and one button
each: install the helper, add an account, or get a missing prerequisite. Untick Show in menu
for anything you do not use. Reopen it any time from the menu → Setup….
Settings… (⌘,) holds the rest: menu bar icon, refresh interval, open at login, sharing Code
sessions across accounts, whether to confirm before Claude quits, what to do with the Codex app
after a switch, and Codex Auto-Switch with its thresholds.
Setting up your accounts
Do this once per account. Set up only the parts you use.
Claude Desktop (and its Code tab)
Claude Desktop has no account switcher: signing in with a second account replaces the first.
Account Switcher keeps each account in its own data folder and swaps the active one: Claude quits,
the folders trade places, and Claude reopens signed in as the other account. Chats, settings and
Code sessions for each account come back when you switch back.
The Code tab uses the desktop app's own login, not the terminal one, so this is the switch that
changes Claude Code inside the desktop app.
- Menu bar icon → Add Claude Desktop Account…
- Name the new account (
Work) and, the first time, your current one (Personal).
- Claude quits and reopens on its sign-in screen. Sign in with the new account.
After that, click an account under Claude Desktop (or Next Claude Desktop Account, ⌘D)
to switch. Each account shows how much of its 5-hour and weekly limits it has used.
Nearly out of quota? When the active account reaches the threshold (90% by default, in
Settings) of its 5-hour or weekly limit and another account still has room, Account Switcher asks
once whether to switch to it. It never quits Claude without asking. Usage comes from Claude
Desktop's own records and, fresher, from claude-swap for the terminal account in the same
organization, so set up Claude Code below too for the best numbers.
Code sessions are shared across accounts, like Codex chats. Hit your limit on one account,
switch, and continue the same Code session on the other. Regular chats (the Chat tab) stay with
their account — they live on Claude's servers. A brand-new account's first sessions join the
shared list after its next switch. The first switch into a new account downloads Claude Code's
runtime once, so that first Code session starts slower. The shared folders move with the active
account rather than being linked, so Claude Code keeps one transcript and one project memory per
session. Each account keeps its own real session folder and the switch copies every session's
newest version into all of them; a session you delete on one account is removed from the others.
Small state files (scheduled tasks, the archive list) are combined. Anything replaced or removed
this way is moved to ~/Library/Application Support/Account Switcher/conflicts. Nothing is deleted.
The Code sidebar layout comes along too: your groups, sections, which session sits in which
group, pinned and starred sessions, and project order. Claude keeps these per account, in
claude_desktop_config.json and twice in its Local Storage, so on each switch the layout of the
account you just left is copied into all three places of the one you switch to. The very first time,
the account with more grouped sessions keeps its layout instead, so an organized sidebar is never
overwritten by an empty one. The replaced layout is saved in the same conflicts folder.
Claude also syncs the layout to each account on claude.ai and would restore that copy at launch,
so the switcher marks the carried layout as not yet uploaded: Claude keeps it and replaces the
account's synced copy with it.
Sessions whose folder was moved and replaced by a symlink are repaired on each switch: their
path is pointed at the real folder and their transcript moved there, so Claude does not reopen
them with an old copy of the conversation.
Updating from 1.1.0? Claude Desktop 2.19 and later cannot save Code sessions into the
linked folder 1.1.0 set up, so sessions started since then disappear when Claude quits. The menu
shows ⚠︎ Repair Code Sessions… until the next switch fixes it; click it to repair right away
(Claude quits and reopens). Sessions lost before the repair still have their transcripts in
~/.claude/projects.
Claude Code in a terminal
This is a separate login from the desktop app, used by claude in Terminal, iTerm and the
VS Code extension. Switching it does not change the desktop app's Code tab. For each account:
claude auth login # sign in with the account
cswap add # store it
Then switch from the menu, or with cswap switch.
Claude Code Auto-Switch (menu toggle, or Settings) keeps claude-swap's own cswap auto running
in the background (a launchd agent). When the active account reaches the threshold of its 5-hour or
weekly limit, it moves to the account with the most quota left, and a notification tells you.
Running terminal sessions keep the old login until restarted. Like Codex Auto-Switch, it also
undoes a manual switch to an account above the threshold. Its log is
~/Library/Logs/Account Switcher/claude-auto.log.
Never run /logout or claude auth logout. It can invalidate a stored account's token.
To change accounts, switch from the menu instead.
Codex
For each account:
codex-auth login
Then switch from the menu, or with codex-auth switch.
Restart the Codex app after every switch. It reads the login only when it starts, so until it
restarts it keeps using the old account — which makes a switch look like it did nothing. After a
manual switch the menu offers the restart.
Codex Auto-Switch (menu toggle) moves you to another account when the current one is nearly
out of quota (by default 5-hour < 10% or weekly < 5% left; change the thresholds in Settings).
Two side effects to know:
- It undoes a manual switch to an account that is below those thresholds. The menu tells you
when that happens; turn Auto-Switch off to force the switch.
- It cannot restart the Codex app, so after a background switch the app is still on the old
account. The menu sends a notification telling you to restart it.
Using it
| In the menu | What happens |
|---|
| An account under Claude Desktop | Quits Claude and reopens it as that account (✓ = current) |
| An account under Claude Code or Codex | Switches to it (✓ = current) |
| Next … Account | Rotates to the next account |
| Claude Code Auto-Switch | Turns claude-swap's automatic switching on or off |
| Codex Auto-Switch | Turns codex-auth's automatic switching on or off |
| Setup… / Settings… (⌘,) | The first-run window / all options, including Open at Login |
| ⚠︎ Repair Code Sessions… | Only shown when Claude cannot save Code sessions (see above). Quits Claude, repairs, reopens |
| Refresh | Re-reads accounts and usage (also happens every minute — see Settings — and when you open the menu) |
Each account line shows quota: Claude shows how much you have used, Codex how much is
left — that is how each tool reports it.
Things to know
- Restart open sessions after switching. A terminal Claude Code session or the Codex app
that is already running keeps the old login. The macOS Keychain also caches for ~30 seconds.
- Switching Claude Desktop quits it. Running chats and Code sessions stop; they are still
there when you switch back.
- Unofficial. Claude does not support multiple accounts; this relies on how the app stores
its data today. A future update could change that; the fix would be in this repo.
- Chat-tab conversations do not move between accounts. They belong to the account on the
server. Code sessions do move (see above).
- Connectors differ per account. A shared Code session resumed on another account uses that
account's connectors and MCP servers.
- Nothing here stores your passwords. Logins stay where each tool puts them: the macOS
Keychain for Claude Code,
~/.codex/auth.json for Codex, and each account's data folder for Desktop.
Where things live
| Path | What |
|---|
~/Applications/Account Switcher.app | The app (/Applications when installed from the DMG) |
~/Library/Application Support/Claude | The desktop account that is active now |
~/Library/Application Support/Claude-Profile-<name> | A parked desktop account |
~/Library/Application Support/Account Switcher/conflicts | Copies set aside when syncing shared Code sessions (nothing is deleted) |
~/Library/Application Support/Account Switcher/session-sync.json | Which sessions each account had at the last switch, to carry deletions over |
~/.local/share/account-switcher/README.md | This guide (menu → Help; opens this page online when missing) |
Uninstall
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/berkboz/account-switcher/main/uninstall.sh | zsh
Removes the app and the guide. It leaves your accounts, desktop data and the helper tools alone;
the script prints how to remove those too.
Troubleshooting
A section says "Not set up". The helper tool for it is missing or has no accounts yet — see
Setting up your accounts.
"Next … Account" is greyed out. Fewer than two accounts are stored for that tool.
The app will not open after a macOS or Claude update. Reinstall with the terminal line above,
or run ./build.sh in a clone.
Claude reopens signed out after a switch. Expected the first time for a new account — sign
in. If an existing account asks again after a Claude update, sign in again; its data is intact.
"Claude did not quit, so nothing was changed." Claude was waiting on a dialog (for example
"quit while sessions are running?"). Answer it and switch again.
Codex switched but still shows the old account. Restart the Codex app.
Codex keeps flipping between accounts. Both accounts are near their limits and Auto-Switch
is bouncing between them. Turn off Codex Auto-Switch and pick one manually.
Quickstart for contributors
Needs macOS 13+ and Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install). No package manager, no
dependencies: the app is three Swift files compiled with swiftc.
git clone https://github.com/berkboz/account-switcher.git && cd account-switcher
./build.sh # build + ad-hoc sign into ~/Applications
"$HOME/Applications/Account Switcher.app/Contents/MacOS/AccountSwitcher" --dump # print what the menu would show
Access you need: none to build and test (public repo). Releasing needs an Apple Developer ID
certificate (maintainer only). Read AGENTS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md before changing code.
Development
./build.sh # build + ad-hoc sign into ~/Applications
./release.sh # Developer ID–signed zip + DMG into dist/
NOTARY_PROFILE=<profile> ./release.sh # …and notarize + staple them
release.sh picks the first "Developer ID Application" identity in your keychain. Create the
notary profile once with xcrun notarytool store-credentials <profile> --apple-id <you> --team-id <TEAMID>.
Publish dist/AccountSwitcher.zip (the terminal installer downloads this exact name) and the DMG
as assets of a GitHub release.
The desktop swap and session sharing can be exercised without touching Claude:
T=$(mktemp -d); mkdir -p "$T/Claude" "$T/Claude-Profile-Test"
ACCOUNT_SWITCHER_ROOT="$T" ~/Applications/"Account Switcher.app"/Contents/MacOS/AccountSwitcher --test-swap Test
# add -shareCodeSessions NO to run the same swap without session sharing
--carry-sidebar <account> copies a parked account's sidebar layout into the active one without
switching (it quits and reopens Claude). --sync-sessions repairs and syncs the Code session folders now (it quits and reopens Claude;
add --force to leave Claude running). Both commands that quit Claude carry on in the background and
report with a notification, so they also work from the terminal in Claude's Code tab. --dump prints what the menu would show; --setup and --settings open those windows at launch.
ACCOUNT_SWITCHER_PATH=/usr/bin:/bin (plus an empty ACCOUNT_SWITCHER_ROOT) shows the setup
window as it looks on a Mac without the helpers.
License
MIT. Not affiliated with Anthropic or OpenAI.
