ClaudeSwitch

A tiny Windows launcher that starts Claude Desktop with the account of your choice. Claude Desktop only signs in one account at a time; ClaudeSwitch gives each account its own profile directory so you can run work and personal side by side.

What it does

On launch a small window appears with one button per profile. Pick one and Claude opens with that account.

• The top profile (orange button, marked ★ at the bottom of the window) uses your existing Claude Desktop login. It is started through the app's own MSIX identity, exactly as if you clicked the normal Claude icon.
• Every other profile gets its own directory, passed to Claude as --user-data-dir. You sign in there once with the other account and it is remembered from then on.

Profiles can run at the same time — each gets its own window, because Electron's single-instance lock is per profile directory.

Installing

1. Download ClaudeSwitch.exe from the latest release and put it in a folder of your choice — or clone the repository and build it yourself (see below). The binary is unsigned, so SmartScreen may ask you to confirm on first run.
2. Open it once and click settings → Add to Start menu to put ClaudeSwitch in the Start menu.
3. Optionally pin it and unpin the original Claude tile, so ClaudeSwitch becomes the way you start Claude.

Note on pinning: Windows blocks applications from pinning themselves to Start (E_ACCESSDENIED). ClaudeSwitch creates the Start menu entry automatically and then opens the apps folder so you can right-click it and choose Pin to Start — one click, once.

Using it

Double-click ClaudeSwitch and pick a profile. Esc closes the window.

You can also skip the window entirely and pass a profile name — handy for extra shortcuts. Matching ignores case and accents, so prive finds a profile named Privé:

ClaudeSwitch.exe Work
ClaudeSwitch.exe personal

On first run two profiles are created for you, Work (the default) and Personal; rename them to whatever you like.

Managing profiles

Click settings at the bottom right of the window. The profile list has these actions:

Button	What it does
New…	Opens a dialog for name and folder. Leave the folder empty to get one under profiles\ automatically, or browse to any folder you like.
Edit…	Same dialog for the selected profile (double-clicking a row works too). For the default profile only the name can be changed.
Delete	Removes a non-default profile from the list. The folder itself stays on disk.
Make default	Makes the selected profile use your existing Claude login. The previous default gets its own folder instead, and signs in once.
Add to Start menu	Creates the Start menu entry and attempts to pin it.

Names must be unique and folders must be absolute paths; the app tells you when they are not, instead of saving something broken. Environment variables are supported and stored unexpanded, so %USERPROFILE%\.claude-personal keeps working on another machine.

Make default is what you use on a second machine. If your personal account is the one signed into Claude Desktop at home, select that profile there and click it — no config file editing, no reinstall.

How it works

Claude Desktop ships as an MSIX package, so its executable lives in a versioned path such as C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Claude_1.30096.1.0_x64__pzs8sxrjxfjjc\app\claude.exe. That path changes with every Claude update, so ClaudeSwitch never stores it. On each launch it resolves the newest installed package from the AppModel repository in the registry (HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\Repository\Packages, value PackageRootFolder). This works without needing read access to the protected WindowsApps directory, and Claude updates never break the launcher.

Profiles are stored in the registry under HKCU\Software\ClaudeSwitch\Profiles, one subkey per profile with Name and Path values. The subkey at index 0 is the default profile and always has an empty path. The tree is rewritten on save, so indices stay contiguous.

Building

Requires nothing but Windows — it compiles with the csc.exe that ships with .NET Framework 4.x, no SDK or Visual Studio needed:

.\build.ps1

This produces ClaudeSwitch.exe next to the source, with the icon embedded. The code targets C# 5 syntax because that is what the bundled compiler accepts.

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
ClaudeSwitch.cs	The entire application — window, settings, launch logic
build.ps1	One-line build script
claudeswitch.ico	Application icon

profiles/ holds live account data and is deliberately excluded from version control.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE.