Switch between Gemini CLI accounts

The short answer

yoink add
yoink save gemini-work --tool gemini
yoink use gemini-work
yoink current --tool gemini

Pick Gemini in the yoink add menu to sign in to another Google account. yoink save captures the account Gemini is signed in to right now. yoink use switches, and yoink current --tool gemini shows which Gemini profile is active. A switch prints the Google account it moved to:

✔ Switched to gemini-work (work@example.com)
Restart the Gemini CLI to pick up the new login.

What a Gemini login is on disk

Gemini CLI keeps its login in a .gemini directory. yoink looks for it at $GEMINI_CLI_HOME/.gemini when GEMINI_CLI_HOME is set, and at ~/.gemini otherwise. Note that the variable names the parent folder, not the .gemini folder itself. Two files make up a login:

A yoink profile stores both files together. When it restores one and the profile lacks one of the two files, the live copy of that file is removed rather than kept, so Gemini never sees a token from one account next to the account list of another. Everything else in the directory, such as your Gemini settings, is left alone.

The name yoink shows is the active email from google_accounts.json, falling back to the email in the ID token. To decide whether the live login still belongs to the active profile, yoink compares that email and the token's Google subject id (sub), both read locally.

Adding an account

Gemini CLI has no separate login command, so yoink add starts the interactive gemini session for you. Before it does, yoink:

1. saves the current Google login as a profile, if no profile holds it yet;
2. deletes the live oauth_creds.json;
3. moves the active email in google_accounts.json into old and sets active to null.

Gemini therefore starts signed out. Run /auth, sign in with the Google account you want to add, then quit with /quit. yoink captures the new login, suggests a name built from the email (for example gemini-work), and asks whether to add another. If the sign-in does not produce a login, yoink restores the one it set aside, so a cancelled /auth leaves you where you started.

You can also skip the menu: sign in inside Gemini yourself, then run yoink save <name> --tool gemini. That is the route to use from a script, because yoink add needs an interactive terminal.

When yoink refuses

Some Gemini setups keep the login somewhere yoink cannot copy. yoink checks this before every save, switch and add, and stops with a message instead of producing a profile it could not restore:

The first check is case-insensitive, so TRUE counts too. To use Gemini profiles, unset the variable and sign in again so Gemini writes oauth_creds.json.

Switching and restoring

yoink use gemini-personal re-saves the live login into the active Gemini profile when the account matches, restores the target's two files with owner-only permissions, and marks it active for Gemini only. If Gemini CLI is running (a process named gemini, or Node running @google/gemini-cli), yoink asks first, and a script must pass --force. The shared steps are in What a switch does.

Your Claude Code account and any Codex, Kimi Code or Copilot login stay as they were. The Mac menu bar app does not list Gemini profiles; switch them from the CLI. For how Codex logins differ, see Switch between Codex (ChatGPT) accounts.

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