Work-Personal Separation Strategies

Commenters discuss techniques like multiple browser profiles, OS user accounts, VMs, and separate devices to isolate work and personal accounts, browsing, and environments for privacy, focus, and productivity.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Career & Jobs
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WSL IT FF GH OSX HN e.g ID ventral.ips YouTube personal accounts separate work personal profile account profiles browser separation use different

Sample Comments

yshavit Jan 18, 2023 View on HN

Ideally I'd want to keep my _personal_ personal stuff separate from my "work personal" (ie my personal logins, but the one for work accounts) separate from my shared work stuff. So I'd want two accounts, one for my truly personal accounts, and then one for my work-personal and have the work-shared connected to that.

Teslazar Nov 1, 2022 View on HN

Can you use two browser profiles, one for personal and one for business? Or, if it goes beyond the browser, perhaps two OS users?

Sami_Lehtinen May 22, 2025 View on HN

Of course you're using different accounts for personal versus work use?

fxfan Feb 22, 2019 View on HN

Same reason as mine- separation of work and private profiles

jarofgreen Jan 19, 2021 View on HN

These days I have different computers for work and play but I used to just have one for both.If that's you, absolutely, definitely, try having different user accounts for work and personal.Having that separation is very important, and having different accounts is an cheap and easy way that almost everyone's OS already supports.

michaelbuddy Jan 9, 2013 View on HN

If you're running a modern OS you can use multiple desktops. why not use a desktop switch - with another browser running your personal account. you could switch back and forth with a key command and maintain the separation. Or if you have the power, run a VM and do it in that.

likortera Jun 5, 2022 View on HN

My solution to this is to have two separate accounts on my work laptop.One for work, the other one for side projects, personal browser, courses, learning, etc.As long as you're not doing anything illegal and are running on a non Administrator account, I think it is a good compromise vs having to carry a second laptop.

username223 Jan 4, 2019 View on HN

Really? That seems surprising and bad. Many people might want to have separate work and personal accounts.

bombolo Oct 24, 2022 View on HN

I use a different account for work. I don't want all the crazy IT authentication rules to spill over to my personal account.

rustyminnow Sep 19, 2020 View on HN

I created a personal user account on my work laptop. It keeps all of my personal and work accounts separate but reduces the effort needed to keep the environments in sync. I use different gtk, browser, and terminal themes to provide context between the accounts which helps keep things isolated