Feature Request: Named account profiles for quick switching between multiple claude.ai accounts

[crinkj]

Feature Request

Problem:
Users who have multiple claude.ai accounts (e.g., personal and work) currently have no way to switch between them without going through a full browser-based /login OAuth flow each time. There is no profile or session management system.

Requested Feature:
Add named account profile support so users can switch accounts from the command line, for example:

claude login --profile work    # logs in and saves as 'work' profile
claude login --profile personal

claude --profile work          # launch with work account
claude --profile personal      # launch with personal account

Or a simpler shorthand like /login <profile-name> within the interactive session.

Current Workaround:
Manually swapping ~/.claude.json files — fragile and not user-friendly.

Why this matters:
Many developers maintain separate accounts for different contexts (personal projects, employer, client work). Forcing a full browser re-authentication every time is a significant friction point.

Environment:

• macOS (credentials stored in Keychain)
• Claude Code CLI

[goulartfs]

Built exactly this — named profiles with instant switching:

npm install -g @synth1s/cloak

cloak create work
cloak create home
cloak switch work    # instant, no logout needed

Shell integration adds a one-step shortcut:

claude -a work       # switch and launch

Sessions, tokens, MCP servers, settings — all preserved per profile. 700+ downloads in the first day.

https://github.com/synth1s/cloak

[yamanidev]

As others have mentioned here and in other threads, it can be accomplished with CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable. I wrote a 1 minute article about my minimal setup, which requires no dependency, hopefully it could be of help: article

[countzero]

Hi,

I ran into the same problem and there are a lot of tools out there for macOS or Linux that already tackle this problem.

Sadly there was no good tooling to manage Anthropic accounts on Windows... so I built this:

https://github.com/countzero/windows_switch_claude_account

Maybe this helps someone 😉

[drogers0]

No browser /login needed. I built aistat to keep each account in its own keychain item and rewrite the live Claude Code-credentials item in place, so the next claude invocation just picks up the switch:

$ aistat switch --to work
switched to work@example.com (uuid 5e9c1a47-3b8f-42d1-a6e0-7c2f9b4d8e13); was personal@example.com

Usage reporting is the other half — it lists every stored account so you can see who has room:

$ aistat -h
Claude usage
- personal@example.com (active) [Max 5x]
  - 5-hour: 92.0% (resets in 4h 53m)
  - 7-day: 71.0% (resets in 2d 5h)
- work@example.com [Max 20x]
  - 5-hour: 4.0% (resets in 4h 12m)
  - 7-day: 12.0% (resets in 5d 9h)

Codex usage
- personal@example.com (active) [Pro]
  - 5-hour: 25.0% (resets in 5h 16m)
  - 7-day: 18.0% (resets in 4d 18h)

cloak and windows_switch_claude_account are more featureful for Claude alone; aistat's angle is one binary that also reports and switches Codex, with JSON output for statuslines by default.

https://github.com/drogers0/aistat

[alexandraapituru]

+1 — concrete use case: I'm a product designer who ships in code for two different clients, and I brought the Claude Code workflow to both on the design part. Each client has its own Claude account (different emails). Today switching means a full logout and browser login every time I change project — and sometimes I'd simply like to run two sessions in parallel, one per client, which a single logged-in account can't do. Both accounts are already paid — this is purely a workflow gap. A profile switcher (like gh auth switch or Google's account menu) would remove the friction. The CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR workaround helps in the terminal, but the desktop app doesn't support it (#25762).

[RajeshGoradia]

Adding the desktop-app dimension to this, since the most recent comment touches on it.

I have two accounts on the same email — a business (Team) seat and a personal plan — and I use the Claude desktop app for chat, not only the CLI. Toggling profiles from the account menu breaks an in-flight conversation.

Worth being precise about the failure mode, because it differs from how #68441 described it. The conversation is not lost. It survives on the original profile, and switching back shows it fully intact. What's broken is the generation: the interrupted response never resumes. The conversation just sits there stopped, and I have to manually ask it to continue. So it's an orphaned turn with no resume, not data loss — and there's still no way to carry a conversation across profiles, or to keep both accounts live at once.

Why I'm posting here rather than opening a dedicated issue: #68441 asked for precisely this (conversation continuity across Team → Personal in the desktop app) and was closed as invalid / not-planned — "doesn't seem to be related to Claude Code." That may be right for this repo's scope, but the practical effect is that desktop-app profile switching has no venue at all, so the profile-management request here is the nearest live thread.

Three things that would resolve it, in priority order:

1. Independent windows per profile — one window per account, both live, no token swap. This removes the need to toggle at all. It's what separate browser profiles on the web achieve today, which is the workaround I've fallen back on.
2. Resume the orphaned turn on switch-back — since the conversation is already intact, the narrow fix is just for the interrupted response to pick up where it stopped instead of needing a manual nudge.
3. CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR honoured by the desktop app (Add environment variable to configure .claude config directory location #25762) — the terminal workaround described in this thread doesn't reach the desktop app.

Both accounts are paid; this is purely a workflow gap.