Our phones have become do-it-all gadgets. They enable us to keep in touch with one another, track how many steps we’re taking each day, snap photos of everything, and access the collective knowledge of humanity. All that universal functionality extends across both our work and personal lives.
The gadget that pings you on Slack when your colleague has a question is the same one that alerts you when your friend has just outscored you at Wordle. That blurring of boundaries can be a problem.
There is actually a solution to this, at least if you’re using an Android phone. Android supports the use of multiple profiles (based on Google accounts), so you can switch between two different ones as needed. The most obvious use case for this is to split up your work and personal usage.
It’s essentially like having two phones on the same physical device: The profile that’s active dictates the apps you can use, the notifications you see, the browsing history you can dig into, and the files you’ve got access to, all dictated by the Google account.
Note that while this feature has been around in Android for a long time and is available on many handsets (including Pixel phones), not every Android manufacturer has implemented it. It’s not available on Galaxy phones, for example, though Samsung does offer something similar with the Secure Folder.
Get Started
To begin with, you’re going to need two Google accounts, but many of us already have a Google account managed by work anyway. If not, you can set up a new Google account, free of charge, to use as the basis of the work profile on your phone: Head to the Google account portal on the web, then click Create an account.
The details you’ll need to provide include a first name, your birthday, and a Gmail address you’d like to register to use with the account—this is what you’ll use to sign in to this account on your phone and on the web. You get some suggestions for an available address based on your name, but you can also come up with something custom as long as no one else has taken it first.
Once you’ve got a second account you can use, open Settings, then choose System > Users. Tap Add user, then Next, and you’re able to give a name to the second user account. With that done, select it from the Users screen, choose the Switch to… option, and you’ll be taken through the process of signing in to your secondary Google account.