How to Use Multiple GitHub Accounts on the Same Computer

I saw this question on Stack Overflow. I also saw the highest rated answer and Jeffrey Way’s blog post mentioned in this answer. However, I didn’t manage to follow their steps.

I later found A Practical Guide to Managing Multiple GitHub Accounts by Fredrick. It successfully helped me set up the SSH keys. The post is already clear enough, but I would like to go over the steps in my own words, and clarify some points I found most confusing.

Almost all the following codes come from Fredrick. I just added my explanation to them.

First, open your Terminal.

cd ~/.ssh 
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "secondary_account@example.com"
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "primary_account@example.com"

After running ssh-keygen -t ..., a question will pop up (Suppose your Mac username is Julia):

Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/Julia/.ssh/id_rsa): 

After the :, you are supposed to enter something like: /Users/Julia/.ssh/id_rsa_secondary or /Users/Julia/.ssh/id_rsa_primary. This is a very important step, but none of the posts I read mentioned it, which has been very frustring for me.

You’ll also be asked to enter passphrases. In fact, you are asked to create passphrases, rather than to enter your GitHub or Computer passwords.

Open the .ssh/ folder with

open -a Finder ~/.ssh

You should see four files in the folder:

id_rsa_primary
id_rsa_primary.pub
id_rsa_secondary
id_rsa_secondary.pub

Copy #

Then, copy the content of the keys for your secondary GitHub account:

pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa_secondary.pub

Now, log in your secondary GitHub account, Click your avatar on the upper-right corner -> Settings -> “SSH and GPG keys” on left panel -> New SSH key. Paste (Cmd + v) in the “key” input field, and add a title in the “Title” box.

Configuration #

Go back to your Terminal:

touch config

Now you can see a file called config within the folder of /Users/Julia/.ssh/. Open it and add the following to it:

# Primary account - default config
Host github.com-primary
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_primary

# Secondary account
Host github.com-secondary
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_secondary

Save (Ctrl + S).

I didn’t create the two git configuration files mentioned by Fredrick and I didn’t encounter any problems.

Save and Authenticate #

Be aware that the following codes starting with ssh-add ... should run at the directory of Users/Julia/.ssh/, not Users/Julia/ as Frederick implies. Check your present working directory with pwd if you are not sure.

Remove previous SSH keys:

ssh-add -D

Add the new SSH keys just created:

ssh-add id_rsa_secondary
ssh-add id_rsa_primary

Check whether it works:

ssh-add -l

To authenticate:

  # Open your secondary GitHub account, and run:
ssh -T github.com-secondary
  # Open your primary GitHub account, and run:
ssh -T github.com-primary

If successful, you can see:

Hi USERNAME! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.

Use #

When working on projects associated with your secondary GitHub account, it’s better to use the SSH format when cloning or pushing. Also, you’d better specify which account you are using:

git clone git@github.com-secondary:USERNAME/REPONAME.git

Last modified on 2021-10-05