Setting up Multiple GitHub Accounts on the Same Machine

You may already have a personal GitHub account set up and working seamlessly. However, after starting a new job, you might also need to manage work-related repositories from a separate account—on the same laptop.

So, how can you efficiently push and pull from multiple GitHub accounts on a single machine? Let’s walk through the process step by step.

Step 1: Create a New SSH Key

We need to generate a unique SSH key for the second GitHub account.

Navigate to the ~/.ssh directory and run the following commands:

cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "testuser@example.com"

When prompted:

Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/crystal/.ssh/id_rsa): id_rsa_mycompany

Tip: Press Enter twice if you don’t want to set a passphrase.

Step 2: Add the SSH Key to GitHub

  1. Log in to your second GitHub account.

  2. Go to Settings → SSH and GPG Keys → New SSH Key.

  3. Retrieve the public key you created:

    cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa_mycompany.pub

  4. Copy the output and paste it into GitHub’s SSH Key field.

  5. Optionally, give the key a descriptive title.

Now, add the key to your local SSH agent:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_mycompany

If successful, you’ll see:

Identity added.

Step 3: Configure SSH for Multiple Accounts

To differentiate between accounts, create or edit an SSH config file:

touch ~/.ssh/config
vim ~/.ssh/config

Paste the following configuration:

# Personal GitHub
Host mygithub
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

# Company GitHub
Host github-mycompany
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_mycompany

Here:

  • mygithub is the alias for your personal account.
  • github-mycompany is the alias for your work account.

Save and exit the editor.

Step 4: Test the Setup

Let’s verify that everything works:

mkdir test-repo && cd test-repo
git init
echo "# Test Repo" >> README.md
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"

On your company GitHub account, create a new repository (e.g., Test). Then, push your local repo to GitHub using the custom host:

git remote add origin github-mycompany:Company/testing.git
git push origin master

Notice that we used github-mycompany (the alias defined in ~/.ssh/config) instead of the default github.com.

Example with a Custom Git Server

For reference, if you’re connecting to a custom Git server, your config might look like:

Host github-mycompany
  HostName mydomain.mygitsite.com
  User mygit
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_company

Then your remote would be added as:

git remote add origin mygit@mydomain.mygitsite.com:testproject-automation/testrepo.git

Step 5: Configure Git Username and Email per Repository

Instead of setting a global Git identity, configure it per repository:

git config user.name "Test User"
git config user.email "testuser@example.com"

This ensures that commits from your personal and company repositories are properly attributed.

Summary

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