claude-account

A cross-platform profile switcher for Claude Code on Linux and macOS. It gives Claude Code an isolated configuration and credential-storage directory for each account and transparently forwards normal commands to the official executable.

claude account add work
claude account add personal
claude account use work
claude account list
claude account current
claude account remove personal

claude
claude "fix this bug in main.py"

Claude Code itself performs login, logout, credential storage, and token refresh. claude-account never reads or copies credential contents.

Important

This is an independent community project. It is not made, endorsed, or supported by Anthropic. Claude and Claude Code are products of Anthropic.

Requirements

• Linux, macOS 10.15 or later on Intel, or macOS 11 or later on Apple Silicon
• A working Claude Code installation
• Claude Code 2.1.144 or later on macOS, for profile-scoped Keychain credentials
• Rust 1.85 or later to build from source

Install a release

Each release produces archives for Linux x86_64, macOS Apple Silicon, and macOS Intel:

Platform	Target
Linux x86_64	x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
macOS Apple Silicon	aarch64-apple-darwin
macOS Intel	x86_64-apple-darwin

Set VERSION to a tag from the releases page. The following picks the archive for the current machine, downloads it and its checksum, and verifies it with the checksum tool available on the platform:

VERSION=vX.Y.Z
case "$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" in
  Linux-x86_64) TARGET=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu ;;
  Darwin-arm64) TARGET=aarch64-apple-darwin ;;
  Darwin-x86_64) TARGET=x86_64-apple-darwin ;;
  *) echo "No release for this platform" >&2; exit 1 ;;
esac
ARCHIVE="claude-account-${VERSION}-${TARGET}.tar.gz"
curl -fLO "https://github.com/hamzarehmandeveloper/claude-account/releases/download/${VERSION}/${ARCHIVE}"
curl -fLO "https://github.com/hamzarehmandeveloper/claude-account/releases/download/${VERSION}/${ARCHIVE}.sha256"
if command -v sha256sum >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  sha256sum --check "${ARCHIVE}.sha256"
else
  shasum -a 256 --check "${ARCHIVE}.sha256"
fi
tar -xzf "${ARCHIVE}"
./claude-account install

The installer prints one export PATH=... line. Add it to your shell startup file (~/.zshrc for the default macOS shell or ~/.bashrc for Bash) and open a new terminal. The shim lives in its own directory; it does not replace the official Claude executable.

Release archives are checksum-protected but are not currently signed or notarized. If macOS Gatekeeper blocks a downloaded binary, build from source instead of bypassing the warning.

Confirm the installation:

type -a claude
claude account list

The claude-account shim should appear before the official Claude executable.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/hamzarehmandeveloper/claude-account.git
cd claude-account
cargo build --locked --release
./target/release/claude-account install

Commands

Add an account

claude account add work
claude account add personal --email you@example.com
claude account add company --sso
claude account add api-billing --console

This opens Claude Code's official login flow. The first profile becomes active. Adding another profile does not switch the active profile. The command also completes Claude Code's local onboarding state, so the next claude launch uses the saved login without asking you to authenticate again.

On macOS, profile names must also be unique when compared without ASCII letter case, preventing two names from sharing one directory on common case-insensitive filesystems.

If a state file created on a case-sensitive system already contains variants such as Work and work, normal commands fail closed on macOS. Choose the exact spelling to unregister and run the explicit recovery command:

claude account resolve-case-collision work
# Or invoke the manager directly:
claude-account resolve-case-collision work

This only unregisters that exact name from the state file. It does not run Claude Code, log out, delete or rename either profile directory, or touch Keychain credentials. The command names the surviving profile and, when the removed name was active, the claude account use NAME step that completes recovery. It refuses profiles that do not have a case-colliding sibling.

Switch accounts

claude account use work

Switching affects newly launched Claude processes. Existing sessions keep the account with which they were started.

Inspect profiles

claude account list
claude account current

current prints only the profile name, making it safe to use in scripts.

Remove an account

claude account remove personal

This runs Claude Code's official auth logout inside the profile and unregisters it. Settings and session history are preserved, allowing the same profile name to reuse them later.

To delete all local data belonging to the profile:

claude account remove personal --purge --yes

Removing the active profile is refused unless --force is supplied. --purge permanently deletes that profile's settings, sessions, plugins, and history in addition to its stored login.

Get help

claude account --help
claude account add --help
claude account remove --help

All non-account commands and flags are passed unchanged to the official Claude executable:

claude
claude -p "explain this project"
claude --model opus
claude auth status --text

Storage

Linux defaults:

~/.config/claude-account/state.json
~/.local/share/claude-account/profiles/<name>/
~/.local/share/claude-account/bin/claude
~/.local/share/claude-account/libexec/claude-account

macOS defaults, matching the tested claude-account-macos layout:

~/Library/Application Support/claude-account/state.json
~/Library/Application Support/claude-account/profiles/<name>/
~/Library/Application Support/claude-account/bin/claude
~/Library/Application Support/claude-account/libexec/claude-account

The standard XDG_CONFIG_HOME and XDG_DATA_HOME variables are respected on both platforms. CLAUDE_ACCOUNT_HOME can place all application data under one absolute directory, which is especially useful for tests.

On macOS, an existing XDG-style installation is reused automatically when no Application Support state exists. If state exists in both layouts, the program fails closed and asks you to select one explicitly with CLAUDE_ACCOUNT_HOME; it never guesses between two account registries.

Existing OAuth profiles created by Kerber0ss/claude-account-macos remain readable in the native Application Support layout. Its API-key profiles are intentionally not imported in this release: the program reports a clear error without reading or migrating their keys.

The state file contains profile names, directory paths, and the real Claude executable path. It never contains access or refresh tokens.

macOS credential isolation

Claude Code stores subscription credentials in macOS Keychain. Claude Code 2.1.144 and later supports configuration-directory-scoped Keychain entries, allowing each claude-account profile to keep an independent login. claude-account passes both CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR and CLAUDE_SECURESTORAGE_CONFIG_DIR as the same private profile directory and overrides inherited values for every managed Claude process. It checks the Claude Code version before login, launch, and logout on macOS so an older global Keychain entry cannot silently select or log out the wrong account.

claude-account never reads, copies, or writes Keychain credential contents; Claude Code continues to own login, token refresh, and secure storage.

Authentication environment variables

To guarantee that the selected profile is actually used, the wrapper removes these variables from the child Claude process:

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
• ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN
• CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN

Set CLAUDE_ACCOUNT_PRESERVE_AUTH_ENV=1 if you intentionally want those variables to override profile authentication.

Development

cargo fmt --check
cargo test --locked --all-targets
cargo clippy --locked --all-targets -- -D warnings

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the contribution workflow and SECURITY.md for private vulnerability reporting.

License

Released under the MIT License.