SnapperTalk

May 18th, 2006

Multiple Skype accounts

Posted by Ben in Communications, VoIP, Windows

Multiple Skype

Whereas with AOL and other instant messaging clients such as the excellent Trillian you can sign-on with multiple user accounts, Skype has never been able to do this, limiting you to one username at a time. Here’s a useful hack I came across here that gets past this limitation if you are running Windows XP Pro.

1. Have two admin-level user accounts on your machine e.g. “user1″ & “user2″
2. Have two Skype accounts e.g. “skypename1″ & “skypename2″
3. Login as user1 and create two shortcuts to the Skype application. Name the icons “skypename1″ & “skypename2″ to remember which is which.
4. Open up the first shortcut as you would do normally and sign-on with “skypename1″. Click the box saying “Sign me in when Skype starts”.
5. Right-click on the second shortcut, and choose “run as” from the contextual menu.
6. When the “Which user account do you want to use to run this program” window pops up, click the 2nd button labelled “the following user” and beneath it select user acount “user2″ and enter the password of that account.
7. A second instance of Skype will open up. Sign-on with “skypename2″ and click the box saying “Sign me in when Skype starts”.
8. Now, all you have to do to run Skype with either or both skype accounts is to click the appropriate shortcut(s).

Clever…

Note: Doing the same on Mac OS X is a bit more difficult, but there is a solution – see this thread in the Skype forums.

UPDATE 02/07/08: There is now an easier and cleaner way to do this – see this newer post

7 Responses to ' Multiple Skype accounts '

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  1. VoIP Mon said:

    Thanks for the Skype multiaccounts info, just what I’ve been looking for!

    April 18th, 2007 at 12:12 UTC

  2. vlad said:

    Hi, I need some help here too.I have opened another skype account on same PC ,but in the “singn up” area it not only remembers my skyp name and the new name but it showed the name that I put in the register form and I can not delete it!?How can it be done?I want only my skype nama and the other new name to remain.I press delete tab but ain’ t working.

    July 17th, 2008 at 06:14 UTC

  3. Laurynas said:

    “Multiple Skype Loader” by Laurynas

    for Skype 3.8.0.154

    Now you don’t have to create different Windows user accounts for each instance of Skype.
    With this loader you can run multiple Skype instances at the same time on the same Windows user account.
    Also this loader is able to transmit commands for Skype command line.

    Screen link:
    http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/0e929b669e.png

    Download link:
    http://www.mediafire.com/?ahaaaaaaaa2

    September 2nd, 2008 at 16:07 UTC

  4. Ben said:

    Hi Laurynas,

    I tried the launcher you linked to, it seems to work fine, so long as you are running the latest version Skype 3.8.0.154

    I assume it’s the same as this one:
    http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=195561

    But just wondering what is the advantage over this one here:

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

    which I wrote about previously here:

    http://www.snappertalk.com/index.php/20080702/multiple-skype-accounts-part-ii/

    Thanks for your comment,

    Ben

    September 2nd, 2008 at 17:00 UTC

  5. pustar said:

    i really dont understand this fuzzing: under LINUX its that easy to run multiple Skype-Instances .. wonder why the coders at skpye dont implement that into a common codebase for all OS-versions :-( .. albeit there is no real alternative – Skype sucks :-(

    December 1st, 2008 at 16:01 UTC

  6. pustar said:

    :~> skype –help
    Skype 2.0.0.72

    Usage: skype [options]
    Options:
    –dbpath= Specify an alternative path to store Skype data files.
    Default: ~/.Skype
    –resources= Specify a path where Skype can find its resource files.
    Default: /usr/share/skype
    –disable-api Disable Skype Public API.
    –disable-cleanlooks Disable forced use of the Cleanlooks Qt style.
    Use this option together with Qt’s -style
    command to set a custom Qt style for Skype.
    –pipelogin Command line login. “echo username password | skype –pipelogin”
    –version Display version information and exit.

    December 1st, 2008 at 16:03 UTC

  7. German said:

    ANSWER:
    How to Run Multiple Skype Accounts On One PC
    http://www.numlock.ch/news/it/simultaneously-using-multiple-accounts-with-skype/

    March 9th, 2010 at 23:24 UTC

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