Specify default Google account for different products

Question

I have two Google accounts, my main one which is used for Drive (formerly Docs), Calendar and also a lot of 3rd party apps via the 'login with Google' feature.

The other Google account I use for my email on Gmail (although the account is under a custom domain running on Google Apps for Business).

The problem I'm having is that although I can have multiple accounts signed in a browser when you move between products it tends to stick in the same account. So if I'm using account-A for Drive, and I switch to Gmail, it stays in account-A (even though account-A doesn't have Gmail set up).

I then have to change to account-B in the top right corner. Is there a way to specify a default account for different products?

In other words,

• use account-A for Drive and Calendars

• use account-B for Gmail

Answer 1

A trick I use is to define a bookmark in my bookmarks bar for each of my various Google services. From my experience, Google services enumerate the user account in the URL, so https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox will take you to account 0's inbox, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox to account 1's and so on. The trick is that you have to sign into your Google accounts in a consistent order as 0 is the account that you first signed into, 1 is the second, etc.

For example, I use:

• Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/my-drive
• Gmail: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox
• Play Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/now
• Work email: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/#inbox
• Personal calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=1
• Work calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=2

Sometimes it gets out of sync if my login sessions expire, but in that case, I can just log out of all accounts and re-login in the correct order.

Answer 2

Google multiple sign-in feature only have one default account. The alternatives are, among others, for each account

• use different web browsers
• use a web browser that supports multiple profiles
• use different OS users profiles
• use different devices

References
Sign in to multiple accounts at once - Google Accounts Help
Use multiple sign-in with Google Docs - Google Accounts Help

Answer 3

There is a solution that uses Google Chrome Extensions and some Coding Skills.

1. Go to chrome://extensions/.

2. On the top right corner, enable Developer Mode.

3. Create (in your computer) a directory with two files included:

manifest.json

  {
    "name": "Redirect when meets",
    "version": "1.0",
    "description": "Redirect to another account on meet load.",
    "manifest_version": 2,
    "content_scripts": [{
       "matches": ["*://meet.google.com/*"],
       "js": ["contentScript.js"]
    }]
 }

contentScript.js

if(!window.location.href.includes("authuser")){
  window.location.href = window.location.href + "?authuser=1"
}

Basically what this Script does is that it matches when you visit a website that contains *://meet.google.com/* (See patterns), and includes the second file script.

In the second script, it verifies if a user is specified (URL includes 'authuser', in other google services you may match /u/), otherwise, it redirects to the URL for your desired default user. (Mine is 1).

4. With the files created, return to chrome://extensions, click on Load Unpacked and select the directory to the files.

Answer 4

I had exactly the same problem (specify different default Google Accounts for different Google Products). And as a programmer, I solved it for myself and released it publicly. You can find the extension that does exactly that here - https://default.wtf/ (yes, it's a bit of self-promotion 🙂, sorry for that).

The extension is completely free, no ads, no analytics, zero tracking, zero data collected (you can check the source code).

With the extension, you can:

1. Select the default account for all Google Products.

2. Customize default accounts for each Google Product Separately.

3. Quickly switch between Google Accounts using the hotkey "Option (Alt) + {num}" (the shortcut is customizable).

Would love you hear your feedback/thoughts. And hope you find it useful.

Answer 5

While this doesn't solve your exact issue, the following procedure solves the related problem where you want to use a different default account for YouTube specifically:

1. Log into e.g. Gmail using account A. This will be your default account everywhere except YouTube. Close the window/tab.

2. Log into Gmail using account B (click on your profile badge and select "Add Account" in the dropdown). This will be your default account on YouTube.

3. Go to YouTube and click "Sign in". This will sign you in with account A. Close the window/tab.

4. From Gmail, using account B, select YouTube in the App selector (the nine squares symbol in the upper right corner). YouTube should open and show a box that allows you to select which account to use. Select B.