MultiClaude

All your Claude accounts, open at once. A free menu bar app for macOS.

brew install --cask quentincar0n/tap/multiclaude

Download the latest release  ·  Website  ·  Why  ·  Features  ·  How it works  ·  FAQ

Why

The Claude desktop app signs in to one account at a time. Plenty of people have more than one:

• a personal Pro or Max plan, and a Team or Enterprise seat from work,
• a separate organization per client, so their projects and data never mix,
• a test account to try a setup before rolling it out to a team.

Switching means signing out, signing back in, waiting for the email code and losing your place. The app can't run two accounts at once.

Claude desktop does accept --user-data-dir: give each copy its own folder and each one keeps its own sign-in, chats and settings. Power users wire that into shell aliases. It works, but you can't see what's open, re-running an alias doesn't bring the right window forward, and every new account means editing ~/.zshrc.

MultiClaude is that trick with a proper interface.

	Shell aliases	MultiClaude
Open an account	type its alias in a terminal	one click in the menu bar
See which accounts are open	no	yes, live
Bring an open account forward	re-run the alias and hope	click it again
Quit one account	find the right window, ⌘Q	hover, click ✕
Add an account	edit ~/.zshrc, reload the shell	type a name, press Return
Rename, reorder, find its data	by hand	right-click
Keep your existing aliases		imported on first launch
Tell accounts apart	every window has the same icon	a color per account, active one named in the menu bar, a named and colored app per account for the Dock and Spotlight
After Claude updates itself	windows come back on the default account	profiles reopen on their own accounts
Tokens spent per account	no	today in the panel, 6 months in a heatmap
Long runs with the lid closed	caffeinate and pmset by hand	Keep Awake, undone when the lid opens

Features

• One profile per account. Each profile is its own Claude data folder, so sign-ins and chats never leak between accounts.

• A color per account. Each profile gets its own color, so you can tell Personal from Work at a glance. Right-click to change it.

• An app and an icon for each account. Turn on Colored Claude Icon per Account (App for Each Profile in earlier versions) and MultiClaude makes a small app per profile in ~/Applications/MultiClaude Launchers, named "Claude Work", "Claude Client" and so on, with Claude's own icon recolored in the profile's color. Find them in Spotlight and Launchpad, or right-click a profile and choose Add to Dock. Rename one with Rename App…. Each account's window then runs with that icon too, in the Dock, ⌘-Tab and Mission Control, so you can tell them apart while they're open. The apps follow renames and color changes, and go away with their profile.

• Know which account is in front. While a Claude window is active, the menu bar shows its account name in that account's color.

• Live status. A filled badge marks every account that is running. The menu bar shows how many are open.

• Survives Claude updates. When Claude updates itself it relaunches on the default account, which breaks every --user-data-dir setup. MultiClaude notices and reopens each profile on its own account.

• Claude Code per account. Right-click a profile and choose Open Claude Code in Terminal: the CLI runs signed in as that account, with its own CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR.

• Click to open, click again to focus. No duplicate windows.

• Hover to quit a single account. The header switch opens or quits all of them at once.

• New Profile in one line: type a name, press Return, sign in to the new account in the window that opens.

• Copy MCP servers between accounts. Set your MCP servers up once, then right-click another profile and choose Copy MCP Servers From. Its config is backed up first.

• Open accounts at startup. Right-click a profile and tick Open When MultiClaude Starts. With Launch at Login on, your accounts are waiting every morning.

• Duplicate a profile. Duplicate as New Profile clones a profile's whole data folder, sign-in and chats included, into a new one. Handy for keeping your current history under a name like "Personal" before signing the default app in to another account. On APFS the copy is instant and takes no extra space.

• Right-click a profile to rename it, move it, show its data folder in Finder, copy a shell alias for it, take it off the list, or delete it with Delete Profile….

• Imports your setup. First launch picks up your default Claude account, any --user-data-dir aliases in ~/.zshrc, and any Claude-* folder in Application Support. A Claude-* folder created later, by an alias for example, joins the list on its own.

• Folders follow names. Rename a profile and its folder becomes Claude-<Name> the next time that account is closed. A link stays at the old path, so old aliases and Claude's own saved paths keep working.

• Sign-in that lands in the right window. Claude's Google and SSO sign-in normally comes back to whichever Claude window opened first. MultiClaude makes each account sign in inside its own window, with nothing to click first.

• Keep your Mac awake. The Keep Awake section holds off sleep until you turn it off or for a set time (15 minutes to 8 hours, or anything up to 24 hours on the slider), with a countdown and a bolt in the menu bar. Options cover the display, a closed lid, power and battery triggers, a left-click toggle and ⌃⌥⌘A. Handy for long Claude Code runs.

• Keep-awake only, if you like. Turn off Manage Claude Accounts and MultiClaude leaves Claude alone and keeps just the keep-awake and scroll features. Your profiles wait for you to turn it back on.

• Token usage per account and in all. Claude Code logs every reply's tokens on your Mac (Code tab, Cowork and terminal). MultiClaude credits each session to the account it ran in and shows today's output per account in the panel, plus a window with a 6-month heatmap, each account's share, and a by-model table. Regular chats keep no token counts on the Mac; turn on Show Chat Limits for each account's 5-hour and weekly limits from claude.ai.

• Keeps your Claude Code conversations. Claude Code deletes transcripts after 30 days by default. MultiClaude keeps a copy of each one per account (an APFS clone, so no extra space while the original exists), lists them with search, shows them, and exports any one to Markdown.

• Lid closed, done right. Turn on Keep Awake with Lid Closed for long agent runs. When the lid closes, each of these is its own option, on by default:

  • Turn the Screen Off, Mute Sound and Pause Chat Apps (Slack, WhatsApp and Discord with their helpers stop syncing and pinging; meeting and recording apps are never paused),
  • Low Power Mode while the lid is closed, and Low Power Mode Below 40% on battery,
  • Ease Off When Hot: Low Power Mode when the Mac runs hot, and the session ends when it gets critical.

  Opening the lid undoes all of it, and MultiClaude only turns off a Low Power Mode it turned on. If MultiClaude is gone while a session had changed something, a small recovery agent puts it back within a minute. No Password Prompt (optional) installs one sudoers rule so the sleep and Low Power Mode commands stop asking for your password. Design after Insomnia.

• Scroll your own way. Reverse the scroll direction of a mouse and a trackpad separately, in Settings (needs Accessibility permission). Smooth-scrolling mice, like an MX Master with Logi Options+, follow the mouse setting.

• Quit them all together. Turn on Quit Profiles with MultiClaude and quitting MultiClaude closes every account it opened.

• Global shortcuts. ⌃⌥⌘M opens the panel; turn on Profile Shortcuts and ⌃⌥1 to ⌃⌥9 jump straight to each account.

• Updates itself. Once a day MultiClaude checks for a new release, installs it in the background and restarts while the panel is closed. Your Claude windows stay open.

• Launch at login, light and dark mode, colored menu bar icon.

• Small. A single Swift file, no dependencies, a 1.6 MB download.

Install

Homebrew

brew install --cask quentincar0n/tap/multiclaude

Manual

1. Download MultiClaude-<version>.zip from Releases and unzip it.

2. Move MultiClaude.app to Applications.

3. MultiClaude is not notarized by Apple yet, so macOS blocks the first launch. Right-click the app and choose Open, or run:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MultiClaude.app

Requires macOS 15 or later and the Claude desktop app in /Applications.

Use

1. Click the ✳ icon in the menu bar.
2. Click New Profile, type a name such as Work, press Return.
3. Click the new profile. A fresh Claude window opens: sign in to your work account there.
4. From now on, click Work to open or focus it, and hover it to quit it.

Your default Claude account is always the first profile. It uses the app's normal data folder, so nothing changes for it.

How it works

• Opening a profile runs open -n -b com.anthropic.claudefordesktop --args --user-data-dir=<folder>, the alias with Claude found by its bundle id. The default profile runs open -b com.anthropic.claudefordesktop.
• Profile apps are tiny bundles whose executable is a shell script: it sends multiclaude://open?profile=<id> to MultiClaude, which opens or brings forward that account, and opens Claude directly if MultiClaude is gone.
• Profile icons on open windows. With profile apps on, each account runs from its own copy of Claude.app in ~/Library/Application Support/MultiClaude/Runtimes.noindex. The copy is an APFS clone, so it takes no extra disk space, and it wears the profile icon as a Finder icon, outside the signed part of the bundle. Nothing inside the bundle changes: its signature stays Anthropic's, Gatekeeper accepts it, and Claude keeps its Keychain access and its own folders. A copy is refreshed from Claude.app after Claude updates, while that account is closed. If Claude's updater restarts a copy without its account folder, MultiClaude closes it and reopens the account. Claude.app itself is never touched.
• Status comes from the running Claude processes: MultiClaude reads each one's --user-data-dir argument and matches it to a profile.
• Profiles are a small list in MultiClaude's own preferences (me.somalabs.multiclaude). Data folders live in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude-<Name>, next to Claude's own. MultiClaude never moves the folder of an account that is open. Remove from List keeps the folder and stops MultiClaude from adding it back.
• Token usage comes from the JSONL transcripts Claude Code writes to ~/.claude/projects and each account's Cowork folder. A session is credited to the profile whose folder lists it, or to "Terminal" when none does. Replies seen twice are counted once.
• Keep Awake holds a macOS power assertion. With the lid closed it also runs pmset disablesleep 1 (and pmset lowpowermode for Low Power Mode), mutes the default output device, and pauses chat apps with SIGSTOP, then sends SIGCONT when the lid opens. What a session changed is written to a small state file, which the launchd agent me.somalabs.multiclaude.recovery reads to undo it if MultiClaude quits or crashes.

Privacy

MultiClaude has no analytics. Its only network requests are the daily update check and, if you turn on Show Chat Limits, claude.ai's usage numbers. The update check: it asks GitHub for this repo's latest release, and downloads it from GitHub when it's newer. Every release is signed with a private key kept outside this repository, and MultiClaude refuses any update whose signature doesn't match the public key built into the app. It also checks the bundle identifier, the version and the code signature before swapping itself. Turn off Update MultiClaude Automatically in Settings to stop it. Usage and conversations are read and kept on your Mac only: MultiClaude reads Claude Code's transcripts (in ~/.claude and each account's folder) to count tokens, and keeps copies in ~/Library/Application Support/MultiClaude/Archive, readable only by you. Turn off Track Token Usage and Keep Claude Code Conversations to stop both; delete that folder to remove the copies. Show Chat Limits is off until you turn it on and confirm: it then reads each account's claude.ai sign-in cookie (macOS asks you to allow "Claude Safe Storage" in the Keychain) and sends it to claude.ai only, never anywhere else; it is kept in memory and never written or logged. It does not modify the Claude app. The scroll reverser, when you turn it on, flips the direction of scroll events as they pass and keeps nothing. Keep Awake with Lid Closed asks for your password for each pmset change, unless you install No Password Prompt: that writes /etc/sudoers.d/multiclaude (checked with visudo), which lets the four pmset commands for sleep and Low Power Mode run without a password. Any app running as you could run those four commands too. Remove the rule from the same row. Removing a profile only takes it off the list: the folder stays on disk until you delete it yourself.

FAQ

Is this made by Anthropic? No. MultiClaude is an independent open source tool. It launches the official Claude app and does not change it.

Does it work with Claude Code? Yes. In the desktop app, each Claude window and the Code tab inside it run with the account of its profile. For the CLI, right-click a profile and choose Open Claude Code in Terminal, or Copy Claude Code Alias for your shell. Each profile gets its own ~/.claude-<name> folder, and Claude Code keeps a separate sign-in for each.

Can I still use my aliases? Yes. MultiClaude reads the same folders, so an account opened from an alias shows as running in the panel. Right-click a profile and choose Copy Shell Alias to get one for a new profile.

I already use the Claude app. How do I keep my chats when adding accounts? Right-click your default profile and choose Duplicate as New Profile, named for example Personal. The copy keeps your sign-in and history. You can then sign the default app out and in to another account, or simply add new profiles next to it.

An account keeps logging out, or its sign-in never finishes. Claude asks every account to sign in again from time to time. Google and SSO sign-in returns from the browser through a claude:// link that macOS gives to the first Claude window it finds, so with several accounts open it often lands in the wrong one. With Sign In in Each Account's Window on (the default), MultiClaude keeps the claude:// links, and Claude then signs in through Apple's sign-in sheet inside the window that asked. Just click Continue with Google in the account that needs it; your other accounts stay open.

Does an open account's window show its own name and icon? The icon, yes: with Colored Claude Icon per Account on, each open account shows its profile icon in the Dock, ⌘-Tab and Mission Control. The name, no. A running app takes its name from inside its signed bundle, and renaming it there breaks the signature: Gatekeeper then reports the app as damaged. So an open window is still called Claude. The profile apps carry the name in Spotlight, Launchpad and on a pinned Dock tile, and the menu bar names the account in front.

How do I remove an account completely? Right-click it and choose Delete Profile…. MultiClaude closes the account and moves its data folder, its Claude Code folder and its app to the Trash, so you can still restore them from there. Your Keychain is not touched. Remove from List only takes it off the panel and keeps the data.

What about Windows and Linux? MultiClaude is a native macOS app. A port is welcome.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/QuentinCar0n/multiclaude.git
cd multiclaude
./build.sh              # builds, installs to ~/Applications and launches
./build.sh --no-install # stops after build/MultiClaude-<version>.zip

Needs Xcode command line tools with Swift 6. Everything is in main.swift: SwiftUI views inside an AppKit menu bar panel.

Screenshots for this README come from a demo mode with sample profiles:

MULTICLAUDE_DEMO=1 MULTICLAUDE_PREVIEW=panel MULTICLAUDE_APPEARANCE=dark \
  ~/Applications/MultiClaude.app/Contents/MacOS/MultiClaude

Releases

Push a v* tag and GitHub Actions builds a universal app, signs it, and publishes the release with the matching CHANGELOG section. Tags with a suffix, like v1.7-rc1, publish pre-releases that the updater and the cask ignore.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md. Ideas on the list: notarized builds, keyboard and VoiceOver access to the profile rows, and a Windows port.

License

Apache License 2.0. You can use, share and modify MultiClaude freely, including commercially. Contributors grant a patent license with their code, and anyone who sues over a patent in this project loses theirs.

The lid-closed part of Keep Awake follows Insomnia by Krish Garg (MIT); see NOTICE.

Claude is a trademark of Anthropic, PBC. MultiClaude is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.

_{Made by Soma Labs in Palo Alto.}