accounts – A changelog by Daniel Mettler

With the recent changes in Skype, the “traditional” method of running several Skype instances using different system users doesn’t work anymore (as the the new authentication dialog strangely doesn’t get the focus anymore).

So, in order to use several Skype accounts on macOS (formerly known as Mac OS X), do the following:

Open the Script Editor (in the ‘Utilities’ folder in the ‘Applications’ folder)
Create a new script with the following content:
```
do shell script "open -na /Applications/Skype.app/Contents/MacOS/Skype --args -DataPath '/Users/your_system_user/Library/Application Support/Skype_any_identifier'"
```
Replace your_system_user by your regular macOS user account (see ‘whoami’ in Terminal)
Replace _any_identifier by the according Skype account name, e.g. _myskypename (doesn’t really matter what, just don’t use an empty string)
Please mind the double quotes and single quotes (important!)
Save the script as an application: File.. Save.., choose “Application” as file format, give it a name and store it e.g. in your home directory or in the Applications folder

Repeat these steps for any of your Skype accounts, giving each Skype account a different Skype_any_identifier. You can then start the according Skype instances by double clicking on the according app.

Explanation:

The above script starts a new instance of Skype (which would otherwise be prevented), using the -n argument. Each instance of Skype gets its own directory to store the according account data, using the -DataPath argument.

It’s a bit of a hack as with this solution, Skype’s memory usage will grow linearly with every additional instance of the Skype client you run (about 40 MB are required per instance), but at least it seems to work fine on Windows XP:

http://www.tradebit.com/channels/software/110543/multiple-skype-accounts-on-one-computer/

Note that the double quotes should be simple double quotes, not typographical ones. So for 2.) the link’s destination should be sth like

%windir%\system32\RUNAS.exe /profile "/user:skype2" /savecred "C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe"

(Of course you need to adjust the paths and user to your environment and settings)

Alternatively, particularly if you use Windows Vista, you could try this free Skype launcher (I haven’t tested it):

http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=88055

Since this launcher doesn’t seem to use dedicated Windows user accounts on your box, you’ll have to disable Skype’s auto-login feature in order to use different Skype profiles.

Tag: accounts

Using multiple Skype accounts on macOS

Multiple Skype accounts on one computer