Manage Multiple Google Accounts

If you are like me, you have more than one Google account. You may have your G Suite account from school plus your personal Gmail account. I was working with a teacher the other day and we were trying to create a TemplateTab. We were clearly in her school account but it kept making it in her personal Gmail account. Frustrating.

Account Picture

When in Google products such as Gmail or Google Drive click on your account picture in the upper left. There should only be ONE account. If you see two or three you will want to disconnect those accounts and instead manage the accounts in Chrome.

Add Account

When you click on “Add account” there are at least 2 accounts that is being remembered and this can cause conflicts. If you have Chrome extensions, those are only logged in as one account. Using a Chrome extension will potentially cause things to happen in your other account since that account is what the extensions are linked to.

Manage People in Chrome

If you use Google Chrome you can instead manage people. Notice in the Chrome browser ABOVE your profile picture it will either say your name or have a picture of a blob man. Click on this and choose “Manage people” from the list. You may need to first “Sign into Chrome.”

Add Person

You will want to “Add person” to add additional Google accounts. What is nice about adding people to Chrome instead of adding accounts is everything is separate. Passwords and cookies are not shared. The Chrome extensions you install are installed by account. Thus you can customize which extensions you use with which account. While mildly annoying to have to install your favorite extension for each account you also ensure that the extension is working only with that account thus eliminating some conflict issues.

Switching Accounts

You can actually have multiple Google accounts open at the same time! Notice in my screenshot below I have at least 5 different Google accounts rocking at the same time. Each account is open in its own window.