Handling Multiple Github Accounts on MacOS

handling_multiple_github_accounts.md

Handling Multiple Github Accounts on MacOS

The only way I've succeeded so far is to employ SSH.

Assuming you are new to this like me, first I'd like to share with you that your Mac has a SSH config file in a .ssh directory. The config file is where you draw relations of your SSH keys to each GitHub (or Bitbucket) account, and all your SSH keys generated are saved into .ssh directory by default. You can navigate to it by running cd ~/.ssh within your terminal, open the config file with any editor, and it should look something like this:

Host *
 AddKeysToAgent yes
 UseKeyChain yes
 IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
 ForwardAgent yes

Assuming you've got 2 github accounts, for work and play, lets get your Mac to "register" them. To do that that you'll need to create SSH key pairs for each account. If you have already setup your Mac to SSH with one of them, or check if you have one, continue on with the following for the second account.

1. Creating the SSH keys. For each SSH key pairs:

• run ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"

• You'll be prompted: "Enter a file in which to save the key" and the suggested default filename would be id_rsa. This filename will be used for your SSH private and public keys so remember to make it unique, eg. user-1, user-2. This step will generate both the private and public keys, user-1 + user-1.pub , user-2 + user-2.pub respectively.

• GitHub has this step in detail. We're not adding the keys to the ssh-agent.

2. Register your keys to the respective GitHub accounts.

• Follow these steps to do so.

3. Head back over to the SSH config file at ~/.ssh and amend accordingly to:

#user1 account
Host github.com-user1
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-user1
   IdentitiesOnly yes

#user2 account
Host github.com-user2
   HostName github.com
   User git
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-user2
   IdentitiesOnly yes

Replace user1 or user2 with your GitHub usernames/identification-handlers

4. Go ahead to git clone your respective repository

git clone [email protected]:user1/your-repo-name.git your-repo-name_user1

5. Configure your git identity:

• Open up local git config using git config --local -e and add:

[user]
    name = user1
    email = [email protected]

6. Ensure your remote url is in the right format e.g: [email protected]:user1/your-repo-name.git your-repo-name_user1

• You either run git remote set-url origin [email protected]:user1/your-repo-name.git your-repo-name_user1
• Or amend your remote ssh-url in your local git config file:

 [remote "origin"] 
       url = [email protected]:user1/your-repo-name.git
       fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

Now you can git actions (pull/push/fetch...etc) all you like!

Resources:

• Automatically use correct SSH key for remote Git repo
• StackOverFlow
• Connecting to GitHub with SSH

Special thanks to @pbuditi for your help!

There is another way to do this with SSH: create SSH configuration aliases for the hosts to define separate keys and change the origin URLs in SSH string to use these alias hosts.

In .ssh/config

Host personal.github.com
  User personalid
   IdentityFile~/ .ssh/personal-ssh-key
   HostName github.com
Host work.github.com
  User workaccount
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/work-ssh-key
  HostName github.com

And then change origin URL in repo config to use [email protected]:whatever or [email protected]:somethingelse kind of URLs. The git commands don't do DNS lookups and SSH resolves the alias names for you with correct key.

https://gist.github.com/Jonalogy/54091c98946cfe4f8cdab2bea79430f9?permalink_comment_id=4479477#gistcomment-4479477

This work for me, Thanks a lot!

Sometime adding the key was not solving it for me. So i started following this sequentially. It gives more consistent result.

# list all the SSH keys attached to the ssh-agent
$ ssh-add -l
# removes all ssh entries from the ssh-agent                             
$ ssh-add -D
# Adds the relevant ssh key  
$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/relevant_ssh_key

🙌 This seems to be the easiest method for me - Thanks! I added an alias in my rc file to make this even easier 😆

# Alias for switching git accounts
alias git_user1='ssh-add -D && ssh-add ~/.ssh/user1_id'
alias git_user2='ssh-add -D && ssh-add ~/.ssh/user2_id'

now to switch accounts I just run git_user1 or git_user2 ✅

This is the easiest way I've found and it works! Thanks @mwritter for posting it <3

So, when we setup github account initially i.e Accout-01, we are redirected to browser OAuth based authication. So, if we follow all the above steps, now we two accounts i.e. Account-01 and Account-2, now even after switching our profile to Account-02, one is unable to pull private repo from Account-02.

Sometime adding the key was not solving it for me. So i started following this sequentially. It gives more consistent result.

# list all the SSH keys attached to the ssh-agent
$ ssh-add -l
# removes all ssh entries from the ssh-agent                             
$ ssh-add -D
# Adds the relevant ssh key  
$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/relevant_ssh_key

🙌 This seems to be the easiest method for me - Thanks! I added an alias in my rc file to make this even easier 😆

# Alias for switching git accounts
alias git_user1='ssh-add -D && ssh-add ~/.ssh/user1_id'
alias git_user2='ssh-add -D && ssh-add ~/.ssh/user2_id'

now to switch accounts I just run git_user1 or git_user2 ✅

This work for me, thanks pal!

Most comprehensive material that I have seen so far. Thank you.

Amazing instructions. Saved me a lot of time. Thank you.

Some clarity on the ~/.ssh/config file:

# personal
Host github.com-benhunt-io 	# <- This is just an alias name you chose
	HostName github.com 	# <- This is the actual host to connect to
	User git				# <- Username github uses for all ssh connections
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_ben # <- SSH key to use
	IdentitiesOnly yes # <- Only use specified key
	
# Git uses ssh to communicate with GitHub. When you set your remote url, you can use the alias name instead of the actual host name.
# Git will translate the alias name,  github.com-benhunt-io, to the actual host name, github.com, and use the SSH key you specified.