How to Set a Default User in Chrome
If you use multiple accounts in Chrome, you know how useful it can be to separate things like personal and professional email. Unfortunately, if you use one much more often than the other, it will be difficult to switch from one to the next every day. By following a few guidelines and creating multiple shortcuts, you can open the correct Google Chrome profile every time, saving you the annoyance of switching between them.
If you only have one account in the Google Chrome browser, it will be the default account. If you are not familiar with how to add an additional account to your Google Chrome browser, it is quite simple.
Adding a user
- Click the menu icon in the upper right corner of Chrome.
- Select “Settings”.
- Select Manage Other People.
- Select “Add Person” in the lower right window.
- Enter the person’s name and select an icon.
- Optional: If this is a child’s account, check the “Follow this person” box to use their Google account to control which sites they visit.
When you create a monitored user, their browsing history, bookmarks, and other settings are not synced across devices. This is not a Google account, but a web browsing account managed by a supervisor (like a parent).
Change default username in Windows
On Windows, you can create a shortcut to the profile you want to always find the account you want. When “adding a user” (see above), check the box next to “Create desktop shortcut for this user”. Creating a desktop shortcut for a user on Windows means that you can simply select the appropriate browser icon (the Chrome logo with the selected profile picture) and launch Chrome with the desired profile. You can also rename the shortcut to whatever you want.
Change default username on Mac
When you close Chrome, the last profile to open will be the one you signed in to when you reopen the browser. This means that if you want your work account to be the first that you see when you open Google Chrome tomorrow morning, you will need to open two windows (one to sign in to your personal account, the other to sign in to your work account). Close the personal account window and sign out of Chrome while the work account window is open. The next time you open Chrome, your work account will be authorized.