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I've been using Google Chrome on Linux since forever and I use Google products for pretty much everything: mail, calendar, contacts, docs. My company also uses Google for internal apps and I've been happily using both accounts setting the company one as the default one as reported in many how-tos (for example: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/4nvMI_r58uQ)

With the following version of chrome:

% google-chrome --version
Google Chrome 69.0.3497.100

I am no longer able to keep the company one as default across Google Chrome restarts. I suspect is related to the fact that I am logged in Chrome with my personal account.

I find this very frustrating because I often have to switch from my personal account to the company one. Is anyone else running into this issue? Does anyone know how to set a default account once and for all?

Please notice that messing around with the URL is not what I want to be doing.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox    # first account
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox    # second account

EDIT 2020-10-04

Newer version of Chrome definitely broke the default account mechanism. I just switched to separate profiles for work and personal browsing. However, I recently tried brave browser and it shows the behaviour that I miss so much from Chrome. I am now using brave on Android and Linux and I am having a great experience. So, thanks Google Chrome for the time together. Is not you, it's me... goodbye.

EDIT

From some comments it appears that my point is not entirely clear. Notice there two logins here:

  1. Login into Google Apps
  2. Login into Google Chrome Browser for syncing bookmarks, history, etc.

I want to use my personal account for 2. And I want to use my company account as default for 1. I tried to logout of both and then login in the correct order, however, this works only until I restart Chrome.

Once I restart Google Chrome, the default account for 1. is set to my personal one.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Since Chrome 69 any login to a Google app causes an automatic login to the Chrome Browser with the same account.

There has been a strong protest on the Internet, and Google has promised to add an option for it on Chrome 70.

Until Chrome 70 comes out, and as long as this workaround still works, you may open chrome://flags/#account-consistency, find Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar and set to Disabled.

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  • 1
    This worked. Thank you. I've disabled Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar, logged out from all accounts, restarted Chrome, logged in the right order, and I can confirm that the order of my Google Accounts is now persisted across Google Chrome restarts. This "Identity consistency" policy is probably useful when you have a single Google Account. But in my case generated quite some confusion. Now I understand why a lot of people dislike it...
    – Riccardo
    Oct 3, 2018 at 8:24
  • A small update: In my current version of Chrome (72.0.3626.109) there are now 6 options for the chrome://flags/#account-consistency: 1. Default 2. Enabled 3. Enabled Dice 4. Enabled Dice (migration) 5. Enabled Dice (fix auth errors) 6. Disabled I can obtain the behavior I describe in the main question only with Enabled Dice (fix auth errors) for some reason. I also have very little clue about what the differences are.
    – Riccardo
    Feb 21, 2019 at 10:00
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    See --account-consistency.
    – harrymc
    Feb 21, 2019 at 10:46
  • Enabled Dice (fix auth errors) is no longer present in Chrome 73.0.3683.86 and default account behavior across restarts is broken again also with Dice. I will look further into this...
    – Riccardo
    Mar 21, 2019 at 13:03
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Yet another workaround is to download and install Chromium, and in Chromium, sign in to your personal account, while using your employer's account when running Chrome.

I have yet to find a functional difference between Chrome and Chromium, and every Chrome extension I have used runs within Chromium. The two have different update mechanisms, and different profile files, but you can copy a Chrome user profile to use with Chromium and vice versa.

The Chromium browser is available in Synaptic (itself part of Ubuntu packages), can be installed with sudo apt-get install chromium-browser in Debian based distros, with sudo dnf install chromium or the Software Market in Fedora, and through the Open Build Service of OpenSUSE.

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  • I believe this doesn't solve my problem. I want one browser with all my extensions, bookmarks and history and be able to use my employer's Google Apps, and occasionally, but often, switch to my personal Google Account. Using two browsers with two different set of bookmarks, history, extensions, and Google Accounts as you are proposing seems even more cumbersome than using different URLs.
    – Riccardo
    Oct 3, 2018 at 8:17

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