Managing Multiple Git Accounts on One Machine

July 4, 2025

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Madhan Gannarapu

How to set up and manage personal and work Git accounts on your local machine.

Introduction

Many developers work with both personal and work GitHub accounts. Here’s how to manage them on a Mac…

What You’ll Learn

Use SSH to separate identities
Automatically apply correct Git user config based on folder
Clean directory structure

Directory Setup

~/
├── .ssh/
│   ├── work/
│   │   ├── id_ed25519_work
│   │   ├── id_ed25519_work.pub
│   ├── personal/
│   │   ├── id_ed25519_personal
│   │   ├── id_ed25519_personal.pub
│   └── config               # SSH config file
├── .gitconfig
├── .gitconfig-work          # Workspace-specific Git config
├── .gitconfig-personal      # Personal Git config
├── work/                    # All workspace (work) repositories
└── personal/                # All personal repositories

Set Up Personal and Work

mkdir personal work

personal: Use this folder for:

Your own apps, portfolios
Open source contributions
Learning new tech, coding experiments
Resume or portfolio projects
Hackathons or fun builds

work: Use this folder for:

company apps/repos
poc apps
Anything related to employment

Generate SSH Keys for Each Git Account

Generate a unique SSH key for each GitHub or GitLab account:

# Personal
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-email@personal.com" -f ~/.ssh/personal/id_ed25519_personal

# Work
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-email@company.com" -f ~/.ssh/work/id_ed25519_work

Now Add the SSH keys to the ssh-agent:

# Personal
ssh-add ~/.ssh/personal/id_ed25519_personal

# Work
ssh-add ~/.ssh/work/id_ed25519_work

Add SSH Keys to Your GitHub Accounts (Company & Personal)

Once you’ve generated the SSH keys, you need to add the public keys to your respective GitHub accounts so they can recognize and authorize your machine
To view the SSH keys in terminal run

# Personal
cat ~/.ssh/personal/id_ed25519_personal.pub

# work
cat ~/.ssh/work/id_ed25519_work.pub

Configure the SSH Config File

Create or update your ~/.ssh/config file:

touch ~/.ssh/config
open ~/.ssh/config

add:

# Personal
Host github.com-personal
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/personal/id_ed25519_personal

# Work
Host github.com-work
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/work/id_ed25519_work

Use github.com-personal or github.com-work as the remote URL host.
## Verification SSH with GitHub accounts
To verify SSH works:

ssh -T git@github-work
ssh -T git@github-personal

Expect messages like: “Hi ! You’ve successfully authenticated…”

Configure the Global`.gitconfig` File

Create two custom Git configs:

# Personal Git config
touch ~/.gitconfig-personal

# Work Git config
touch ~/.gitconfig-work

Open and fill them like this:
~/.gitconfig-personal

[user]
  name = Madhan Gannarapu
  email = your-email@personal.com

~/.gitconfig-work

[user]
  name = Madhan Gannarapu
  email = your-email@company.com

Use Conditional Includes in Global `.gitconfig`

Create or update your ~/.ssh/config file:

touch ~/.ssh/config
open ~/.ssh/config

Paste this:

[user]
  name = Default Madhan
  email = default@example.com

[includeIf "gitdir:~/work/**"]
  path = ~/.gitconfig-work

[includeIf "gitdir:~/personal/**"]
  path = ~/.gitconfig-personal

This config tells Git to automatically use different identity files depending on which directory the repo is in.

Clone Repos with Correct SSH Host

Use the matching host from your ~/.ssh/config file

# Personal
git clone git@github.com-personal:username/repo.git ~/Projects/personal/repo

# Work
git clone git@github.com-work:company/repo.git ~/Projects/work/repo