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Allow multiple account credentials #326
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Is there currently a way to work around this by removing the current authentication? I can't seem to find it.
Reinstalling seems to work, but it's very cumbersome.
Reacted by Mahadi Hasan, EVANDRO FRANCISCO GARCIA and ธีรพันธุ์ โอษฐ์จันทึกReacted by ธีรพันธุ์ โอษฐ์จันทึกReacted by Mahadi Hasan, EVANDRO FRANCISCO GARCIA and Klaiderman@eXamadeus GitHub CLI currently has no mechanism for switching between multiple GitHub accounts and I don't really have a workaround to suggest for you at this moment, sorry.
The only approach I could imagine, but would not recommend to anyone, would be to authenticate with 1st account, save a copy of
~/.config/gh/hosts.ymlsomewhere & delete the original file, authenticate again with the 2nd account, and now you can swap the~/.config/gh/hosts.ymlfile with the backup file when you need to switch accounts.Since this solution involves using SSH for git protocol, make sure both configuration files include the
git_protocol: sshline.Reacted by Huy Z, hotoolong, DRogers, Julian Coy, Chris Clark, EVANDRO FRANCISCO GARCIA, ธีรพันธุ์ โอษฐ์จันทึก and Nadav CohenReacted by EVANDRO FRANCISCO GARCIA and Nadav CohenReacted by ABADY200900 and Nadav CohenIf we can add two entries or as many entries on every
gh auth login. It might become easier with something like this:github.com: user: aitchkhan oauth_token: xxx user: haroonKhan-10p oauth_token: xxx git_protocol: sshIf the
clican somehow sense which username the current repository is associated to. It would be easy to find the user in the hosts.yml and rest would be magic.PS: I have not gone through the codebase. These are my assumptions.
Reacted by Mislav Marohnić, seed.of.apricot, tomholford, Zakery Clarke, Luis Paredes, Chris Perko, Toni DY, ShareForEver, Bruce Edge, Tedley M and 17 moreReacted by Pasatedeverga and Nadav CohenReacted by Pasatedeverga and Nadav CohenSearched and landed here. This feature would help people with two or more accounts (personal/business/others) and use both of them every day (swapping the config file would be too much for them).
Reacted by Benjamin Staneck, Ben Nelson-Weiss, Mat Pataki, tomholford, Zakery Clarke, p1va, Luis Paredes, Changsheng Wu, Gnyani, Sam and 57 moreIt's a bit hacky, but I solved this so that I could evaluate if I want to actually use this cli by using the token auth capabilities, putting this into my dotfiles.
alias gh_cli=$(which gh) function gh() { if [[ $(pwd) =~ {PATH_TO_PERSONAL_CODE} ]]; then GITHUB_TOKEN=$PERSONAL_GH_CLI_TOKEN else GITHUB_TOKEN=$WORK_GH_CLI_TOKEN fi GITHUB_TOKEN=$GITHUB_TOKEN gh_cli $@ unset GITHUB_TOKEN }Reacted by Prabhanjan, Daniel Tiziani, Changsheng Wu, Jeremy Wu, Stefano Charissis, Tristan Koch, Eugen Martynov, Prabhat Pandey, Toni DY, Julian Coy and 22 moreReacted by Blake E@fdm1 Which config file did you fill that in?
Now that #2179 has been merged, perhaps it will be less effort to implement this feature?
Would be nice to have something like how
githandles it:
~/.gitconfig[includeIf "gitdir:~/dev/"] path = ~/.gitconfig.personal [includeIf "gitdir:~/workspace/"] path = ~/.gitconfig.work~/.gitconfig.work[user] name = example-work-user email = [email protected]edit
Now that I think about it some more, can
ghinfer which authed account to use from the currentgit config user.nameor email?Reacted by NithyaSharabheshwara Ananda, salpreh, Zhibo, Changsheng Wu, Ryan Edge, MD, Steve Larkin, Toni DY, Mat Pataki, Daniel Rodríguez and 7 moreReacted by Narendra MauryaSince #2444 has been merged, as an alternative solution, set the environment variable
GH_CONFIG_DIRto different directories could allow multiple accounts.Reacted by Changsheng Wu, Leandro Lucarella (discontinued, see Bio), Dan, Adam Lindberg, Christopher Layne, Gary Miller, Iain Samuel McLean Elder, Víctor, John Bates, Ben Klein and 1 moreI just implemented simple multi-account support based on the
remote.origin.urlconfig property (of course GH_HOST is on board as well): #3278So having hosts.yml as
github.com: user: personal-account oauth_token: personal-token github.com/acme: user: work-account oauth_token: work-token
we use work credentials for all acme repositories and personal credentials for everything else.
Unfortunately, gh cli uses global settings for "default" host, so I postponed the implementation ofImplemented.gh auth statuswhich uses several credentials at the same time.Reacted by Param SiddharthMaybe this is a workaround if u wanna use multi credentials for a specific command. such as
pr view/usr/local/pr2
#!/usr/bin/python3 import subprocess import json import os import re with open(os.path.expanduser('~/.pr-config.json')) as f: configs = json.load(f) command = 'gh pr view --web' remote_url = subprocess.check_output(['git', 'config', '--get', 'remote.origin.url']).strip().decode() for pattern, config in configs.items(): is_match = re.match(pattern, remote_url) if is_match: os.system( f'GH_HOST={config["host"]} GH_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN={config["token"]} {command}' ) break
~/.pr-config.json
{ "[email protected]": { "host": "enterprise.com", "token": "" }, "[email protected]": { "host": "enterprise1.com", "token": "" } }Reacted by Mislav MarohnićI am able to have multiple accounts signed in and that is nice, but one thing that I am trying to do is when I am creating a repository I would like to select my account. Doing something like
gh repo create my_name/repo_namedoesn't seem to work because one of my accounts is enterprise and one is public. Passing in my enterprise name like this causesHTTP 404: Not Found (https://api.github.com/users/my_enterprise_username)when I am logged into both my personal and enterprise GitHub but trying to create a repo for my private Github. This is not like a first-logged into account gets priority, no matter the order in which I log into my GitHub accounts I will receive this error when trying to create a repo for my enterprise account. Is there a way to forcegh repo createto use the enterprise API instead of the public one? Right now I must log out of my personal account to create an enterprise repo unless I am doing something wrong.Reacted by jaysonv101 remaining items
- added a commit that references this issue
on Jul 21, 2025 I've tried a few different workarounds for this, and ended up just writing a little script and putting it on my path as
gh, overriding the actualghexecutable. This way, any other scripts/tools that callghwill first switch the user appropriately. This script sets the user based on the presence of a string in the current path, but you can customize the logic here however you want.#!/usr/bin/env bash # Set the gh user based on the repo being accessed if [[ "$PWD" == *acme* ]]; then # use myusername2 for acme repos /usr/bin/gh auth switch -u myusername2 >/dev/null 2>&1 else # otherwise use myusername1 /usr/bin/gh auth switch -u myusername1 >/dev/null 2>&1 fi /usr/bin/gh "$@"
Reacted by Tommy Nguyen, Nicolas and Artem UdovykI believe this is supported now with
gh auth switch:gh --version
gh version 2.67.0 (2025-02-11)
https://github.com/cli/cli/releases/tag/v2.67.0gh auth switch --help
Switch the active account for a GitHub host.This command changes the authentication configuration that will
be used when running commands targeting the specified GitHub host.If the specified host has two accounts, the active account will be switched
automatically. If there are more than two accounts, disambiguation will be
required either through the--userflag or an interactive prompt.For a list of authenticated accounts you can run
gh auth status.USAGE
gh auth switch [flags]FLAGS
-h, --hostname string The hostname of the GitHub instance to switch account for
-u, --user string The account to switch toINHERITED FLAGS
--help Show help for commandEXAMPLES
Select what host and account to switch to via a prompt
$ gh auth switch
Switch the active account on a specific host to a specific user
$ gh auth switch --hostname enterprise.internal --user monalisa
LEARN MORE
Usegh <command> <subcommand> --helpfor more information about a command.
Read the manual at https://cli.github.com/manual
Learn about exit codes usinggh help exit-codes
I was able to login to multiple accounts usinggh auth loginand then switch between them withgh auth switch.Interesting, though when I do this with a Github Enterprise account, switching to the github enterprise, it tells me its now the active account, but when i run
gh repo list [owner]it does not pull from my org, and still pulls from github.com.gh auth status # output shows both accounts logged in one from enterprise url and one from github.com gh auth switch --hostname github.xxx.xxx --user xxxxx #outputs: # ✓ Switched active account for github.xxx.xx to xxxx gh repo list # outputs personal repos on github.com - the usernames are different as well, but i'm also specifiying the host in the switch.
Maybe something I'm still doing wrong but feels like this might be a potential issue with
gh auth switch.@dotnvo per
gh auth switchhelp:This command changes the authentication configuration that will be used when running commands targeting the specified GitHub host.You can target a host with
GH_HOST,--hostname(for some commands), or it can be inferred from git remotes in your cwd.From
gh env:`GH_HOST`: specify the GitHub hostname for commands where a hostname has not been provided, or cannot be inferred from the context of a local Git repository. If this host was previously authenticated with, the stored credentials will be used. Otherwise, setting `GH_TOKEN` or `GH_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN` is required, depending on the targeted host.Hope this helps.
Reacted by dotnvoFWIW I posted the first comment on this issue nearly 6 years ago. I wanted to loop back in to say my piece. It's been nice to see all the work the GH team has done to address feature requests and customer concerns. Seriously, yall are great.
I do believe the
gh auth switch+ some careful scripting would have solved my particular issue. It not fully automatic, but it did get around the awful "uninstall" loop that was the solution of the time.BTW, I solved this about 5 years ago. I just moved to a company that let me use one Github account with SSO, so I no longer need to switch auth from personal to work 😆!
Reacted by William Martin and YewFence@dotnvo per
gh auth switchhelp:This command changes the authentication configuration that will be used when running commands targeting the specified GitHub host.You can target a host with
GH_HOST,--hostname(for some commands), or it can be inferred from git remotes in your cwd.From
gh env:`GH_HOST`: specify the GitHub hostname for commands where a hostname has not been provided, or cannot be inferred from the context of a local Git repository. If this host was previously authenticated with, the stored credentials will be used. Otherwise, setting `GH_TOKEN` or `GH_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN` is required, depending on the targeted host.Hope this helps.
@dotnvo per
gh auth switchhelp:This command changes the authentication configuration that will be used when running commands targeting the specified GitHub host.You can target a host with
GH_HOST,--hostname(for some commands), or it can be inferred from git remotes in your cwd.From
gh env:`GH_HOST`: specify the GitHub hostname for commands where a hostname has not been provided, or cannot be inferred from the context of a local Git repository. If this host was previously authenticated with, the stored credentials will be used. Otherwise, setting `GH_TOKEN` or `GH_ENTERPRISE_TOKEN` is required, depending on the targeted host.Hope this helps.
Yeah that's helpful thank you!
I guess I'm dense lol - I thought switching to the account gave it the inference it needed using
gh auth switchbut I see what you mean now.I'm switching to GH CLI (was using GitKraken for a long time, but due to budget we are no longer using it).
From some testing, it seems if I want to do tasks like
gh repo listill just have to set that env var up. No biggie I can easily write wrapper commands to do that.I guess I'm dense lol - I thought switching to the account gave it the inference it needed using gh auth switch but I see what you mean now.
Pretty understandable tbh, I don't think you're the first person maybe even in this thread that has hit the same issue. Part of the problem is that multi account came long after host targeting so the worlds conflict a little bit. The env var is your best bet for
gh repo listindeed.I've tried a few different workarounds for this, and ended up just writing a little script and putting it on my path as
gh, overriding the actualghexecutable. This way, any other scripts/tools that callghwill first switch the user appropriately. This script sets the user based on the presence of a string in the current path, but you can customize the logic here however you want.I took this idea and made a version (in Fish — sorry!) that does the same but switches based on the configured Git
user.namewhich is expected to match a/your GitHub account login username. For me, I have my Git config based aroundincludeIffor certain directories, so I just have to set that for my GitHub account to also match my configured Git user.function gh set user $(git config user.name) if command gh auth status --json hosts --jq '.hosts["github.com"].[].login' | grep -Fqx "$user" command gh auth switch -u "$user" >/dev/null 2>&1 else echo "gh: matching gh user for git user '$user' not found" end command gh $argv end
Hope this helps :)
Reacted by @tobeycodes, ArNazXx and Emily Marigold KlassenI came up with the workaround for OSX using Seatbelt: https://github.com/caseycs/gh-sandbox-osx
Reacted by Václav Brožík and Denis Voytyuk- added a commit that references this issue
on Apr 9, 2026 I came at this problem from a different direction, looking to make it automatic to use my non-personal account for any repo in the non-personal org, and my personal account for everything else. I implemented it in a PR, that was of course automatically closed, but wanted to add it here as a reference as well.
I set it up so that you can add a mapping of owner -> user, and then any repo with a configured owner will use the mapped user via the factory created http client. If there is not an owner->user match, it will use the globally active one. This allows me to leave it as my personal account in general, but ensures that when I need to interact with a non-personal repo, I'm using the correct credential.The solutions suggested here are good solutions if the repos are segregated by directory easily. That wasn't the case for me, so the owner path seemed the most straightforward.
Reacted by Václav Brožík and Usman
Describe the feature or problem you’d like to solve
I have two accounts on github each with access to a different set of private repositories. Currently I use a combination of git's
[IncludeIf ...]config and a custom config which overrides the SSH private key I use for certain repositories. E.g.:In
~/.gitconfig:and in
~/work/.gitconfig:It will be great if the credentials for
ghcan also be configured per repository as well.Proposed solution
There are a bunch of options I can think of:
ghconfig by a file in a local clone's.gitdirectoryghconfig which defines which repos/orgs should use which credential. E.g.How will it benefit CLI and its users?
It will allow Github users with multiple accounts of varying access to seamlessly work on different repositories.