Use multiple git account on your mac

Sometimes developers are facing problems with using multiple git accounts. This article will cover how we can use multiple git and GitLab accounts on a single mac.

Like you have 3 users one is “niamul” and 2nd one is “cssniam” at gitlab.com and 3rd one is at github.com with the following name “niamulrox”.

Now first generate SSK key with the following instruction: https://gitlab.com/help/ssh/README

Make sure when you will generate the SSK key then for the different user you have to store key at different file like

IdentityFile /Users/Niamul/.ssh/id_rsa
IdentityFile /Users/Niamul/.ssh/id_rsa2
IdentityFile /Users/Niamul/.ssh/id_rsa3

After that create a config file at ~/.ssh/ with the following command

cd ~/.ssh/
touch config
nano config

And in config just add the following settings

Host niamul.gitlab.com   
    User git   
    Hostname gitlab.com   
    PreferredAuthentications publickey   
    IdentityFile /Users/Niamul/.ssh/id_rsa   
    
Host cssniam.gitlab.com   
    User git   
    Hostname gitlab.com   
    PreferredAuthentications publickey   
    IdentityFile /Users/Niamul/.ssh/id_rsa2   
    
Host niamulrox.github.com   
    User git   
    Hostname github.com   
    PreferredAuthentications publickey   
    IdentityFile /Users/Niamul/.ssh/id_rsa3

Now you have to delete cached keys with the following command

ssh-add -D

Next, you can check that your keys were added:

ssh -T [email protected]
ssh -T [email protected]
ssh -T [email protected]

If you get a success message then you are done with the multiple account SSH Key authentication

Now for every project, you have to define your username and user mail with the following command

cd ~/project_location
git config user.name "niamul"
git config user.email "[email protected]"

Adding Remote path

When you will add your remote path from any project either GitHub or GitLab in your local git project then you must have to follow tricks to make it works with the different user like If you get your remote repository URL like this

[email protected]:niamul/main-site-master.git

Then for the first user of GitLab, you have to replace it with its hostname define in config like

[email protected]:niamul/main-site-master.git

So actually domain will replace with the host like for example, I had replaced “gitlab.com” with my first user hostname “niamul.gitlab.com”. Make sure to use your own username. As demo, I have used my own user name but you just need to replace it with your own user name. Hope it will help you to use the Use multiple git accounts on your Mac.