Does anyone understand google workspace?

[Squashinthepinkcup]

and can help me?

I use multiple google accounts on my laptop; a personal one, work one, business one and currently standing in for a colleague so also have theirs. My work one is set as 'default', however this seems to be as useful as a chocolate fireguard.

If I open a new tab I am logged in as the work account, I navigate to google calendar and it switches to my personal so I then have to switch accounts which opens the calendar in a new tab. If I were to then try and go to the google drive it reverts back to my personal, but if I open a document it will be my colleague. There doesn't seem to be an exact rhythm/rule to which account is opened, but I've learned to be diligent in checking. It's irritating.

I just want it to ALWAYS open as my work account, as that's the one I need 80% of the time, then I can choose to use the others when necessary. Only have the one laptop.

Any ideas??

Install a different browser and only log into the work one on that browser. Do all your work using that one and use your normal browser for normal personal stuff.

In your case I'd have two browsers eg Chrome and safari. Have one be work only and log out of other g accounts. Then have your personal ones on the other browser.

Do you use Chrome as your default browser? Workspace definitely works better with Chrome than with safari.

@DoAWheelie @Do88byisfree @bryceQ thanks for the responses!

I use chrome as my main browser, always have done. Was under the impression from various sources that it was best to stay away from Safari so have just naturally gravitated towards Chrome.

Which other browser would you recommend? I got a new laptop today (sadly have to send the old one back so can't keep separate accounts on separate machines) so feels like an opportunity for a new start!

Try firefox

Forgot about that one! Thanks @DoAWheelie

Yeah, multiple Google accounts is a right mess.

Separate browsers is a good call. But if you don't have the patience for that (and I don't), or if you have more than two Google accounts to keep separate, then you could use the browser itself to tame them. I personally use FireFox's https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers, where I set up a container per Google account. This gives me colour-coded tabs so I can tell which Google account each tab is logged in to. There's a bit of faff with things like meeting links where I need to open a tab in my work profile and paste the link into there, rather than just clicking on it, but not then having the dance of trying to convince Google to switch profiles is a worthwhile tradeoff.

You can do something similar with setting up distinct Profiles in Chrome. I had a brief skim on this article and it looks broadly speaking up to date with how to do so, across both Firefox and Chrome: https://www.theverge.com/23610451/chrome-browser-google-accounts-profiles

This is so helpful, thanks!! Right now I've set everything up as separate users on the mac but switching between users is a right faff and I can see it getting old extremely quickly. This seems like a better solution

Oh hell, constantly switching users would drive anyone nuts.

If you want to go all in, and you're prepared to nerd out completely, then you could dedicate an entire operating system per use-case with https://www.qubes-os.org/. I do this for my work laptop and it's the best solution there is for keeping different accounts separate but still workable.

BUT! You need to be an expert Linux user to even contemplate it, it can only be installed on a minority of computers, and it comes with significant usability tradeoffs. The benefit is I have a dedicated operating system for work. And a different entire dedicated operating system for each separate client for work. And a different one again for personal stuff. And a different one again for online banking. All on the same computer. And I can have them all running at the same time and see their windows side by side, even copy and paste between them.

But switching to QubesOS just for the sake of switching between Google profiles would be like deploying the world's entire supply of wrecking balls to crack a single nut.

Sign into the google account on chrome and create a desktop shortcut. Do this for each account, and access them via that.

Google is not fit for purpose as a replacement to Microsoft in a business setting. Try installing the Google apps rather than browser.

Basic email functions, such as labels don’t work consistently in mail, not being able to combine email and calendar is shite.

Also you can have each one have a different colour to be more easily identified.

The profiles thing has resolved all my issues!!! Thanks so much again

This is the way. Chrome profiles work very well once you have them set up. You end up with a little icon at the top right of the browser saying which user you are.