Two Claude accounts on one Mac: work and personal
Keep your work Claude, or a client's in a second Claude on the same Mac: both open at once, each signed in to its own account, with its own notifications and Dock icon. Parallex is free and open source.
How
- Install Parallex (below). Your Claude isn't changed.
- Choose New Instance and pick Claude. Name it for what it's for, like “Claude Work”, and give it a color.
- Open it and sign in with the other account. Both run at once, each in its own windows, each with its own Dock icon.
What you get with Claude
- A Claude of its own: Parallex has a recipe for Claude that gives the instance its own data folder, so its sign-in, chats and settings are its own.
- Separate Claude Code settings (an option): its own
~/.claude(skills, CLAUDE.md, memory and history). Off, Claude Code shares them with your other Claude. - Share MCP servers (an option): uses the MCP servers set up in your other Claude, brought up to date each time it opens, while sign-ins and chats stay separate.
- Sign-in links go to the right Claude: a
claude://link from the browser goes to the copy you signed in from. - Its own Dock icon, name and color, so you always know which Claude you're typing into.
Tested every night
Parallex's compatibility lab makes a fresh copy of Claude 1.46388.4 every night on a clean Mac and opens it. On October 1, 2026, on macOS 26.6.2, the copy ran, and nothing reached the original's data. Its copies have run clean on all 2 nights since September 30. See every app's latest result.
Good to know
- Claude's log files stay in
~/Library/Logs/Claude, shared, because Claude opens them before it reads any setting.
Questions
Can I sign in to two Claude accounts in the app?
One Claude is signed in to one account at a time. A second Claude is signed in to the other, and both run at once.
Does Claude Code get mixed up between them?
Turn on Separate Claude Code settings for the instance and it uses its own ~/.claude, separate from your other Claude's.
Get Parallex
Free and open source, for macOS 14 and later. In Terminal:
curl -fsSL https://parallex.mandip.dev/install | shOr download it from GitHub, or with Homebrew: brew tap mandipadk/parallex https://github.com/mandipadk/parallex then brew install --cask parallex. Then choose New Instance, pick Claude, and give it a name.
Already have Parallex?
This opens New Instance with Claude picked; you name it and choose its color.
Make a second Claude