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Posted on May 5

I Was Tired of Juggling 3 GitHub Accounts — So I Built a Desktop App to Fix It

#git #opensource #devtools #ssh

If you've ever managed multiple GitHub accounts on the same machine — a personal account, a work account, maybe a freelance client account — you know the pain.

You clone a repo, push some code, and then realize it went up under the wrong username. Or worse, you spend 20 minutes debugging why your SSH key isn't working, only to find out you're using the wrong identity file.

I got tired of it. So I built DevSwitch.

👉 Repo: https://github.com/umesh-saini/DevSwitch

The Problem With Multiple Git Accounts

Managing multiple Git identities manually looks something like this:

# ~/.ssh/config
Host github.com-work
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_work

Host github.com-personal
  HostName github.com
  User git
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_personal

Then every time you clone a repo, you have to remember to use the right host alias:

git clone git@github.com-work:mycompany/project.git

And then manually set your local user.name and user.email per repo.

It's doable. But it's tedious, error-prone, and hard to onboard teammates with. Every few months I'd mess something up and spend an hour fixing it.

What DevSwitch Does

DevSwitch is a cross-platform desktop app (Electron + React) that manages all of this for you — visually, in one place.

Here's what it handles:

🔑 SSH Key Management

Generate new ED25519 or RSA keys with a single click
Import existing keys from your ~/.ssh directory
Optionally protect keys with a passphrase (stored encrypted, never plain text)
Auto-register keys with ssh-agent ### 👤 Profile Management

Each profile stores your:

Git username and email
Linked SSH key
Auto-generated SSH host alias (e.g. github.com-umesh) No more editing config files by hand. DevSwitch writes them for you and keeps them clean.

🔄 Auto-Sync

Already have a bunch of SSH keys set up? Hit "Sync All Keys" and DevSwitch will scan your ~/.ssh directory, parse your existing config, and create profiles for every key it finds — without touching anything you've already configured.

🔗 GitHub OAuth Integration

Connect your GitHub account to a profile and DevSwitch can upload your SSH public key directly to GitHub — no copy-pasting into settings pages required.

Tech Stack

For the curious:

Electron 40 — desktop shell
React 19 + TypeScript — frontend
Tailwind CSS v4 + Radix UI — UI components
Zustand — state management
electron-store — encrypted local storage
Node.js crypto — passphrase encryption The architecture separates the Electron main process (SSH operations, file system, IPC) from the React renderer cleanly. All sensitive data like passphrases are encrypted at rest.

Using It Day-to-Day

Once you've set up your profiles, switching between accounts is just context — you clone with the right host alias and DevSwitch has already wired up the SSH config for you.

Clone with your work account:

git clone git@github.com-work:company/repo.git

Clone with your personal account:

git clone git@github.com-personal:umesh/side-project.git

No extra commands. No fumbling with GIT_SSH_COMMAND. It just works.

What's Next

I have a roadmap of features I want to add:

[ ] CLI companion tool for terminal-first developers
[ ] Export/import profiles for team sharing
[ ] Git hook integration to auto-switch profiles per repository
[ ] SSH key rotation scheduler

- [ ] Cloud sync across machines

Try It Out

DevSwitch is open source under the MIT license.

🔗 GitHub: github.com/umesh-saini/DevSwitch

If you've felt this pain before, give it a star ⭐ — it genuinely helps with discoverability, and I'd love to hear what features matter most to you.

And if you find a bug or want to contribute, pull requests are very welcome. I've marked some good first issues to make it easy to get started.

Built by a developer who kept pushing code to the wrong GitHub account at 2am. Never again.

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