Use multi git accounts on mac

One for company, one for yourself.

Why you need two accoutns

If you have both personal and company GitHub accounts, it is best practice to set up a separate SSH key for each account. This approach avoids authentication conflicts and keeps your personal and work credentials isolated

Steps

1. Set Up Multiple SSH Keys

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_personal_email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_company_email@example.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa_company

2. Add to ssh key agent

ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal
ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa_company

Tip: Use ssh-add -l to list currently loaded keys.

3. Add Public Key to the Corresponding GitHub Account

Go to GitHub > Settings > SSH and GPG keys, and add the correct public key for each account.

4.Edit Your SSH Config File on Mac

~/.ssh/config and add entries for each account:

# Personal GitHub
Host github-personal
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal
IdentitiesOnly yes

# Company GitHub
Host github-company
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_company
IdentitiesOnly yes

• Host is just a shortcut (you’ll use it in git clone)
• User must always be git
• HostName should stay github.com

5. Test Your SSH Connections

Before cloning any repo, verify both connections:

ssh -T git@github-personal
ssh -T git@github-company

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

6. Clone Repositories Using the Correct Host

Use the corresponding host alias defined in ~/.ssh/config:

# Clone a personal repo
git clone git@github-personal:yourPersonalUsername/your-repo.git

# Clone a company repo
git clone git@github-company:yourCompanyOrg/your-repo.git

How to use in each project

Once your repository is cloned, configure user info per project:

git config user.name "Your Name"
git config user.email "your_email@example.com"

You can check settings anytime:

git config user.name
git config user.email

Optional: Default Git Identity per Directory (macOS)

If you often switch between personal and company projects, you can automate user identity. This means you can automatically set your user.name and user.email for all projects under a folder, without manually running git config each time.

Step-by-Step Setup

1. Organize your projects, Every Git repository inside these folders will inherit the correct identity.

~/work/       # all company projects
~/personal/   # all personal projects

1. Edit your global Git config nano ~/.gitconfig ```bash [includeIf “gitdir:~/work/”] path = ~/.gitconfig-company

[includeIf “gitdir:~/personal/”] path = ~/.gitconfig-personal

3. Create the included config files
Company config (~/.gitconfig-company):
```bash
[user]
    name = Your Company Name
    email = your_company_email@example.com

Personal config (~/.gitconfig-personal):

[user]
    name = Your Personal Name
    email = your_personal_email@example.com

1. How it works
2. Create a new repo under ~/work/project1:

     mkdir -p ~/work/project1
     cd ~/work/project1
     git init
   

3. Git will automatically use the company identity (user.name and user.email) from ~/.gitconfig-company.
4. Similarly, a repo under ~/personal/project2 will automatically use your personal identity.
5. No need to run git config user.name/email manually in each repo.

References

• How To Work With Multiple Github Accounts on your PC