How to Use Multiple GitHub Accounts with SSH Keys on a Single Computer?

For a long time, I wanted to access both my personal account (vineelkovvuri) and my Microsoft work account (vineelko) from my work laptop. Naturally, using the same .ssh/id_rsa.pub key for both GitHub accounts wouldn’t work. This article explains the workaround I came across.

Step 1: Generate Separate SSH Keys

First, generate different SSH key pairs for each account:

C:\> ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "vineel.kovvuri@gmail.com"
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (C:\Users\vineelko/.ssh/id_rsa): C:\Users\vineelko/.ssh/id_rsa_vineelkovvuri_github

The crucial part here is saving the RSA file with a distinct name (id_rsa_vineelkovvuri_github).

Repeat this process for your work account, saving it as C:\Users\vineelko/.ssh/id_rsa_vineelko_github.

Step 2: Configure SSH

Add the following configuration to C:\Users\vineelko\.ssh\config:

# Personal Account (vineelkovvuri)
Host github-vineelkovvuri
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_vineelkovvuri_github

# Work Account (vineelko)
Host github-vineelko
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_vineelko_github

Step 3: Clone Repositories with Modified URLs

When cloning repositories from your personal account, instead of:

git clone git@github.com:vineelkovvuri/vin-pro.git

Use:

git clone git@github-vineelkovvuri:vineelkovvuri/vin-pro.git

The modified hostname (github-vineelkovvuri) tells SSH which key file to use when authenticating with GitHub.com.

Step 4: Configure Repository-Specific Git Settings

On my work laptop, I keep my work email and username in the global ~/.gitconfig since that’s my primary account. For personal repositories, I set project-specific configurations:

C:\repos\vin-pro> git config user.name "Vineel Kovvuri"
C:\repos\vin-pro> git config user.email "vineel.kovvuri@gmail.com"

Because we cloned the repository using the modified URL, the remotes are automatically configured correctly:

C:\repos\vin-pro> git remote -vv
origin  git@github-vineelkovvuri:vineelkovvuri/vin-pro.git (fetch)
origin  git@github-vineelkovvuri:vineelkovvuri/vin-pro.git (push)

No more WSL or multiple Windows users or complicated includeIf dance. Hope this helps.