Name: claude-account-switcher
Author: SnlperStripes

Hit your limit on one Claude account, keep working on the next one. One click, no email code.

A tray tool for the Claude desktop app. It swaps the signed-in account in about ten seconds,
carries your Claude Code chats across, and shows the live usage of every account you own.

Your sign-ins never leave your machine. Tokens stay encrypted exactly as Claude stored them,
and the only server they ever go to is api.anthropic.com.

Unofficial. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.

The problem

You have two Claude accounts because one runs out. Switching between them in the desktop app goes like this:

Sign out. That throws the sign-in away. Next time you need it, you start from zero.
Sign in with the other address and wait for the email code. With a private relay address, that means opening another app to find it.
Find your work. Claude files Claude Code chats per account, so the chat you were in the middle of is gone from the sidebar. The conversation still exists on disk; the app just does not list it.
Guess which account has room left, because usage only shows for the one you are signed in to.

Three of those four steps are pure overhead, and the fourth is a guess.

What it does instead

Keeps every sign-in. Each account's sign-in is saved when you switch away from it and put back when you switch to it. You type an email code once per account, ever, and not again until Anthropic ends that sign-in.

Switches in one click. Right-click the tray icon, pick an account. Claude quits, the sign-in is swapped, Claude starts again. Everything else in Claude's settings stays exactly as it was.

Brings your chats along. Before Claude starts, the switcher copies the chat list entries of your other accounts into the one you switch to. Open the chat you were in and keep going. Projects come along too, so chats stay grouped in them. Chats you deleted stay deleted.

Shows usage for all accounts at once. 5-hour and weekly usage for every saved account, live, with when each weekly limit resets and the 5-hour reset once that limit is close. The tray icon is a ring that fills with the active account's 5-hour usage: green, orange from 75%, red at your switch threshold.

Can switch on its own. Off by default. Turn it on and the switcher moves Claude to the account with the most room left once the active one passes 96% (or 90, 94, 98, your choice). A second toggle moves it to an account whose weekly limit is about to reset mostly unused, so that usage is not lost.

Measured

The first real run, on Windows 11 with the Microsoft Store version of Claude, from the switcher's own log:

Step	Time
Add a second account, including typing its email code	44 s
Detect the new sign-in, import the missing chats, restart Claude	9 s
Switch accounts, from the click until Claude starts again	9 s
Round trip of Claude's real `config.json` through the switcher	byte-identical

Install

Download the file for your platform and run it. No installer, no runtime, one file.

Windows 10/11: claude-account-switcher-windows-amd64.exe. Works with the Microsoft Store app and the direct download. Or install it with winget and start it with claude-account-switcher:
```
winget install SnlperStripes.ClaudeAccountSwitcher
```
macOS: claude-account-switcher-macos (universal). The first start asks once whether it may read "Claude Safe Storage" from your keychain; that is the key Claude uses to encrypt its sign-in. Builds in CI, not yet tested on a real Mac. Reports welcome.
Linux: there is no official Claude desktop app, so there is nothing to switch.

Then turn on Start at login in its menu.

The builds are not code-signed, so the first start gets one warning:

Windows: SmartScreen says "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.
macOS: the download is not executable yet and Gatekeeper blocks it. Run this once in the folder you saved it to:
```
chmod +x claude-account-switcher-macos && xattr -d com.apple.quarantine claude-account-switcher-macos
```

Every download has a .sha256 file next to it, so you can check it is the file CI built.

First run

Start the switcher while you are signed in to Claude. It picks up that account within a minute.
Choose Add account…. Claude restarts on its sign-in screen. Your first account is kept.
Sign in with the second account. The switcher notices, restarts Claude once more, and the chats of your other account show up.

From then on, click an account to switch.

[!IMPORTANT]
Never use Sign out in Claude to change accounts. Signing out can end that sign-in on Anthropic's side, and the switcher's saved copy stops working. The account then shows "signed out, add it again". Use Add account… to sign it in once more.

Auto-switch

Two toggles in the menu, both off until you turn them on:

Auto-switch moves Claude to the account with the most room left once the active one is nearly full.
Auto-switch to use up expiring weekly moves Claude to an account whose weekly limit resets soon with most of it unused, so that usage is not lost.

A switch restarts Claude. A reply that is being written at that moment stops, and you continue it in the same chat on the other account.

Anthropic's terms do not forbid having more than one account. They do forbid "bypassing any of our systems or protective measures". Whether automatic switching fits how you use your accounts is your call, which is why both toggles are off until you turn them on.

When Auto-switch acts

All of these have to hold before the switcher acts:

Rule	Why
The active account is at or above the threshold, 5-hour or weekly	96% by default, so the switch lands before a reply gets cut off at 100%
Another account is at least 10 points below the threshold	No bouncing onto an account that is nearly full too
The active account was checked in the last 5 minutes, the other one in the last 15	No decisions on stale numbers
The last switch was more than 10 minutes ago	No ping-pong
Claude is running	It never starts Claude behind your back

When Auto-switch to use up expiring weekly acts

Weekly usage you do not spend before the reset is gone. With this on, the switcher moves Claude to another account when all of these hold:

Rule	Why
The other account's weekly limit resets within 24 hours	That is the usage about to be lost
It has used 50% of its week or less	Worth a restart only when a good part is left
It is at least 10 points below the threshold, 5-hour included	It can actually take work right now
The active account is not in the same spot itself, resetting within 24 hours at 50% or less	Its own unused week counts just as much
You did not switch by hand in the last 5 hours	Your own pick wins
No Claude Code chat was active in the last 15 minutes	This switch is never urgent, so it waits instead of cutting off a reply

The freshness, cooldown and "Claude is running" rules above apply too. When several accounts qualify, the one that resets first wins. With both toggles on, being nearly full comes first: the account with the most room wins over the one that resets first.

Once it has moved to an account, it keeps using that week until the reset, even after more than half of it is used. If that account's 5-hour limit fills up and the normal auto-switch moves away, it comes back once the 5-hour window resets. Switching by hand ends this.

After any automatic switch, from either toggle, the top of the menu says why for 12 hours, for example "Auto-switched at 03:12 to use up this account's week before it resets 18:00".

How it works

The switcher saves and restores the sign-in of each account, copies the chat list and projects between accounts, and reads usage from api.anthropic.com. It backs up Claude's files before every switch and leaves the rest of Claude's settings alone.

Which files, and what happens to them

Claude keeps its sign-in in two places inside its data folder:

Platform	Data folder
Windows, Microsoft Store app	`%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_<id>\LocalCache\Roaming\Claude`
Windows, direct download	`%APPDATA%\Claude`
macOS	`~/Library/Application Support/Claude`

What	Where	What the switcher does with it
Sign-in tokens	`config.json`: `oauth:tokenCacheV2`, `oauth:tokenCache`, `lastKnownAccountUuid`	Saves and restores these three entries, leaves every other entry untouched
Web session	`Network/Cookies`	Saves and restores the file while Claude is closed
Chat list	`claude-code-sessions/<account>/<organization>/local_<id>.json`	Copies missing entries in, refreshes older ones, never deletes
Deleted chats	`deleted_<id>` next to the entries	Reads them, so a deleted chat is never copied back
Projects	`local-agent-mode-sessions/<account>/<organization>/spaces.json`	Adds missing projects, refreshes older ones, never deletes. Leaves out the claude.ai project link of the other organization, and a project you deleted in an account is not copied back
Conversations	`~/.claude/projects`	Nothing. They are shared by all accounts already

Before each switch, config.json and the cookie store are backed up. The last 10 backups are kept. If any step fails, the backup goes back and the error shows at the top of the menu.

Usage. The saved token cache is decrypted in memory with Claude's own key (DPAPI on Windows, the keychain on macOS). The switcher then asks api.anthropic.com for each account's profile and usage, the same endpoints Claude and Claude Code use themselves. The active account is checked every two minutes, every minute from 85%, the others every ten. That endpoint is rate-limited per account and Claude polls it too, so after a 429 the switcher waits as long as the server asks, or backs off up to 30 minutes, and keeps showing the last numbers meanwhile. Claude's tokens last about a month, so a saved account keeps showing live usage without being signed in.

Updates. Once a day the switcher asks GitHub for the version number of the latest release. Nothing about you or your accounts goes along. When a newer version is out, the top of the menu says so, and a click opens the download page. With winget, winget upgrade SnlperStripes.ClaudeAccountSwitcher does the same. To never contact GitHub, quit the switcher, add "noUpdateCheck": true to state.json and start it again.

The Store app quirk. Programs started from inside the Store version of Claude, a Claude Code terminal for example, see a redirected AppData folder. The switcher notices when it was started that way and starts itself again through Explorer, so it sees the real files and survives Claude quitting.

Your data


Saved sign-ins, state, backups, log	`~/.claude-account-switcher` (`%USERPROFILE%\.claude-account-switcher` on Windows), Open data folder in the menu
Tokens	Stored exactly as Claude encrypted them. Never written in plain text, never sent anywhere but `api.anthropic.com`
Network	`api.anthropic.com` for profiles and usage. `api.github.com` once a day for the latest version number, off with `"noUpdateCheck": true` in `state.json`
Remove an account	Quit the switcher, delete its folder under `accounts/` and its entry in `state.json`
Uninstall	Turn off Start at login, quit, delete the binary and the data folder

Command line

claude-account-switcher -status

Prints every saved account with its usage and exits.

Build

Go 1.26 or newer.

go test ./...
go build -ldflags "-H=windowsgui -s -w" -o claude-account-switcher.exe .   # Windows
CGO_ENABLED=1 go build -o claude-account-switcher .                        # macOS

One dependency beyond the standard library: fyne.io/systray for the tray icon, plus golang.org/x/sys on Windows.

FAQ

Can the Claude desktop app be signed in to two accounts at once?
Not on its own. The app holds one sign-in at a time, and switching means signing out and waiting for an email code. The switcher keeps a saved sign-in for every account and swaps between them in about ten seconds.

How do I switch Claude accounts without signing out?
Install the switcher, add each account once with Add account…, then pick an account from the tray menu. You never use Sign out again.

What happens to my Claude Code chats when I switch accounts?
They come along. The switcher copies the chat list and projects of your other accounts into the one you switch to, so the chat you were in shows up in the sidebar and you can keep going.

How do I see the usage of all my Claude accounts at once?
The tray menu shows 5-hour and weekly usage of every saved account, live, with when each limit resets. claude-account-switcher -status prints the same in a terminal.

What can I do when I hit the Claude usage limit?
Switch to an account that has room left, or let Auto-switch do it for you shortly before the limit.

Does it work with the Microsoft Store version of Claude?
Yes. It finds the Store app's real data folder and works with the direct download too. Windows 10 and 11.

Does it work on macOS?
It builds for macOS (universal) in CI, but nobody has tested it on a real Mac yet. A test report helps.

Does it switch the Claude Code CLI in the terminal?
No. This switches the Claude desktop app, including the Claude Code chats inside it. The claude command in a terminal keeps its own sign-in, and the switcher does not touch it.

Do my sign-ins leave my machine?
No. Tokens stay encrypted exactly as Claude stored them, and the only server they ever go to is api.anthropic.com. The only other request is a daily check on GitHub for a new version, which sends nothing about you and can be turned off, see How it works.

How do I update?
The menu says so when a new version is out; click it for the download page and replace the file. With winget, run winget upgrade SnlperStripes.ClaudeAccountSwitcher. Your accounts and settings stay in the data folder.

Caveats

This relies on how the Claude desktop app stores its files today, not on a published interface. An app update can change that. When it does, the switcher fails loudly, restores its backup and says so in the menu. It does not guess.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome, see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Got a Mac? A macOS test report helps a lot, even if everything just worked.
Found a security problem? Please report it privately, see SECURITY.md.
If the switcher saves you time, a star helps other people with more than one account find it.

License

Apache 2.0. Use it, change it, ship it, sell it.

Keep the credit. If you pass this on, changed or not, include the NOTICE file, which names the author and links back here, and say what you changed.