🔁 GitHub Account Switcher

Easily switch between multiple GitHub accounts (like personal and work) from the command line — without GUI prompts or credential headaches.

📦 Installation

Install the CLI tool globally via npm:

npm install -g easy-git-account-switch

Once installed, use it anywhere via:

easy-git-account-switch

✨ Features

• One command to switch accounts
• Stores tokens securely
• Disables GUI prompts (askpass)
• Uses HTTPS (no SSH keys needed)
• Works with private and public repos
• Global CLI, no setup hassles

🚀 How It Works

This tool:

• Sets the global Git username and email
• Stores a personal access token (PAT) securely in ~/.git-credentials
• Uses external config files to manage multiple accounts
• Prevents Git from triggering GUI prompts (askpass)
• Authenticates via GitHub API to verify your token
• Lists local Git repos and shows remotes

🛠️ Setup Instructions

1. Create GitHub Personal Access Tokens

• Visit: https://github.com/settings/tokens
• Click Generate new token (classic)
• Select scopes like:
  • repo
  • read:org
  • workflow
• Copy and save the token

2. Create Token File

Create a file at:

~/.github_tokens

Example content:

personal=ghp_exampleTokenForPersonal
work=ghp_exampleTokenForWork

3. Create Account Config File

Create a file at:

~/.github_accounts

Example content:

# Format: account=username,email
personal=your-username,[email protected]
work=your-work-username,[email protected]

4. Run the CLI

Once setup is done, run:

easy-git-account-switch

You’ll see:

Select a GitHub account:
1) personal
2) work
#?

🔒 Security Note

These files contain secrets:

• ~/.github_tokens
• ~/.github_accounts
• ~/.git-credentials

Make sure they're protected:

chmod 600 ~/.github_tokens ~/.github_accounts ~/.git-credentials

Never commit them to any repository.

🧼 Troubleshooting

| Issue | Solution | |-------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Still asked for credentials | Ensure credentials are for https://github.com, and askpass is disabled | | 403 error | Token might not have repo access, or wrong account selected | | GUI prompt shows up | Run the CLI again to re-apply Git config |

✅ Example Usage

$ easy-git-account-switch
Select a GitHub account:
1) personal
2) work
#? 2

✅ Switched to 'work' account globally!
✅ Authentication successful!

🔗 Works With

• ✅ Any GitHub repo using HTTPS
• ✅ Personal or organization-owned repos
• ✅ Multiple GitHub accounts

❌ SSH remote URLs are not supported in this version.

⚡ Troubleshooting: command not found

If you installed the package globally but get:

bash: easy-git-account-switch: command not found

it usually means your system PATH does not include the global npm binaries folder.

1. Find the npm global install path

Run:

npm prefix -g

On Windows, this is usually:

C:\Users\<YourName>\AppData\Roaming\npm

2. Add npm bin to PATH

🔹 Git Bash (Windows)

Edit your ~/.bashrc (or ~/.bash_profile) and add:

export PATH="/c/Users/<YourName>/AppData/Roaming/npm:$PATH"

Reload:

source ~/.bashrc

✅ Tip: In Git Bash, npm sometimes installs executables as easy-git-account-switch.cmd.
Once your PATH is set correctly, you can still run it simply as:

easy-git-account-switch

🔹 PowerShell / CMD (Windows)

Add this folder to your System Environment PATH:

C:\Users\<YourName>\AppData\Roaming\npm

Then restart your terminal.

✅ Tip: In CMD/PowerShell, if you see both easy-git-account-switch and easy-git-account-switch.cmd in that folder, just use:

easy-git-account-switch

— Windows automatically resolves the .cmd extension.

🔹 macOS / Linux

Usually npm puts binaries into /usr/local/bin (already in your PATH).
If not, add:

export PATH="$(npm prefix -g)/bin:$PATH"

to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.

3. Verify

Run:

easy-git-account-switch

If it works, you’re good to go 🎉

Happy switching! 🔁