I always install Chrome Beta on all my Android phones; here’s why

It’s been more than 13 years since Chrome first launched on Android. Fundamentally, the app hasn’t changed much in all these years: I type a URL and the page loads up. In all these years, though, Chrome hasn’t caught up with the rest of Google’s apps in one key feature: multiple account support.

Most of the official Google apps let me quickly switch between different Google accounts, and they have done that for many years now, since 2010-2011, to be precise. Chrome, however, doesn’t allow that for some reason, and it’s the bane of my existence. To fix that, I always install Chrome Beta (and Chrome Dev) on my Android phones. Here’s why and how I make it work for me.

I’m probably not the only person to have multiple Google accounts. Many people have at least two — personal and work/school — and potentially more for other purposes. For me, there’s a personal one, a work one for Android Authority, and a joint one with my husband, which we use for all the shared bills, reservations, documents, and purchases.

Since the beginning, I’ve established a clear separation between these three accounts. I don’t link them together inside the same Chrome profile on my desktop computer; instead, I use separate Chrome profiles that allow me to keep church and state private. That way, my work browsing doesn’t affect my personal recommendations, and my personal data doesn’t leak into work or my shared joint account.

Bookmarks, browsing history, cookies, caches, default addresses and payment methods, saved logins and passwords — all of these are separate between each account and profile because they do serve completely different purposes.

On my Android phone, though, Chrome only allows me to log into one account and sync all that data over. If I want to switch to another account, I can’t simply swipe on my avatar and have it roll between personal, work, and joint. No, I have to sign out and then sign back in with the other account, do what I need, then remember to sign back out and into the first one again. I did that for all of one day back in 2012 and immediately regretted it. Then it occurred to me: There’s also Chrome Beta, can I sign in with a different account?

And sure enough, I was able to keep my personal account linked to the main Chrome app on my phone, and then sign into my work account on Chrome Beta. I finally had a setup that was almost as good as what I had on my computer! I could keep my browsing and personal data separate and control what each profile sees and knows about me. Perfect.

The app does have “beta” in its name, and that should mean bugs, at least on paper. But in my 10+ years of using both browsers at the same time, I don’t even recall one instance where Chrome Beta failed me. I’m sure it’s not exactly as stable as the main release, and bugs occur, but what I’m trying to say is that it’s generally good enough to not be a “beta” experience in everyday life.

The only hiccup is in handling links coming in from other apps. Say I’m checking a work email and I click a link, it’ll open in my default browser, which is Chrome stable, i.e., on my personal account. So I’ve learned to copy the link’s URL, manually open Chrome Beta, and paste it. It’s annoying, but not as annoying as sacrificing my privacy by keeping all my data in one browser.

In 2017, when I got married and created a joint account with my husband, I demoted my work account to Chrome’s less stable Chrome Dev since I was focusing on a better work-life balance and used my phone less for work. My new joint Google account with my husband became my mainstay Chrome Beta account. Dev has had a few bugs in all these years, but once again, nothing that I would call a dealbreaker. If you have even more Google accounts, you can go experimental and assign your least-used one to Chrome Canary. At this point, do expect some more frequent issues and bugs.

Unfortunately, the list of standalone Chrome apps stops there, so if you have five or more Google accounts, you won’t be able to log in with all of them. But four is a good start. Of course, it would be better if Google could add multiple profile support in Chrome so we don’t have to resort to these workarounds, and those with more than four accounts can still keep their browsing data separate. I had hope for that in 2012-2013, but in 2025, I think the hope has wilted and died.

When I mentioned this multiple-Chrome trick in my article about the Google apps I always install on my Pixel, reader Darth Vader said that he uses this same trick for another purpose: to separate his VPN browsing from his regular local browsing using a VPN app that allows tunneling per application. I found this fascinating and an excellent way of using these separate Chrome apps to achieve different browsing needs, even under the same Google account. You could, for example, have one regular instance of Chrome and another in Beta, where you don’t allow the browser any permissions, disable third-party cookies, and pick different settings or flags. That sounds very useful, too.