Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
It’s been more than 13 years since Chrome first launched on Android. Fundamentally, the app hasn’t changed much in all these years: I type a URL and the page loads up. In all these years, though, Chrome hasn’t caught up with the rest of Google’s apps in one key feature: multiple account support.
Most of the official Google apps let me quickly switch between different Google accounts, and they have done that for many years now, since 2010-2011, to be precise. Chrome, however, doesn’t allow that for some reason, and it’s the bane of my existence. To fix that, I always install Chrome Beta (and Chrome Dev) on my Android phones. Here’s why and how I make it work for me.
Do you use Chrome Beta, Dev, or Canary to create two separate browsing sessions or profiles? 7 votes Yes. 29 % I used to, but I no longer need this. 0 % I had no idea this can be done! I'll do it now. 14 % No, I have no need for this. 57 % No, I don't use Chrome at all. 0 %
What Chrome Beta allows me to do that Chrome stable doesn’t
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
I’m probably not the only person to have multiple Google accounts. Many people have at least two — personal and work/school — and potentially more for other purposes. For me, there’s a personal one, a work one for Android Authority, and a joint one with my husband, which we use for all the shared bills, reservations, documents, and purchases.
Since the beginning, I’ve established a clear separation between these three accounts. I don’t link them together inside the same Chrome profile on my desktop computer; instead, I use separate Chrome profiles that allow me to keep church and state private. That way, my work browsing doesn’t affect my personal recommendations, and my personal data doesn’t leak into work or my shared joint account.
Bookmarks, browsing history, cookies, caches, default addresses and payment methods, saved logins and passwords — all of these are separate between each account and profile because they do serve completely different purposes.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
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