In this article
Three accounts fit in the app at once on a free account, more with Premium, and switching between them is instant. The mechanics are simple; living with them is where it gets interesting.
Every mistake people make with multiple accounts is a version of the same one: acting in the account they were not looking at. This page is about making that hard.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Add and switch accounts, and see at a glance which one you are in.
- check_circle Make two accounts look different enough that you cannot confuse them.
- check_circle Stop a work account interrupting your evening without muting the rest.
- check_circle Know what happens when you log one of them out.
All of them stay connected in the background, which is why switching is instant and why all of them can interrupt you.
manage_accounts They are fully separate, which is the risk
Each account has its own chats, contacts, folders, drafts, privacy settings and appearance. Nothing leaks between them, and that is exactly what you wanted.
It also means nothing warns you. Post in a group from the wrong account and Telegram has no way to know it was wrong — the message is simply from that account, which is a real account of yours, behaving normally.
So the work is making the accounts distinguishable before you need them to be. Everything below is a version of that.
Four ways to stop confusing them
Each is a one-off change that prevents a class of mistake.
palette Two accounts that cannot be mistaken
notifications_off One of them should be quieter
lock The weakest one is the one that matters
devices Removing one
Ten minutes once: different colours, different notification rules, a password on each.
settings Managing them
- Add an account The side menu on Android or Settings on iOS, then Add Account. Sign in with the other number.
- Switch by tapping, peek by holding Holding shows the other account's chats without marking anything read.
- Set a different theme in each Appearance settings, in each account separately. This is the change that prevents the most mistakes.
- Set notifications per account Also separate. Quieter for whichever one should be.
- Set a cloud password in each Privacy and Security, per account.
- Check the account name before acting from a share sheet The one habit that has to be manual.
This page is several accounts living on one device. The curriculum step covers what that leaves behind: what each account stores locally, how to remove it properly, and what to do on a machine that is not only yours.
At a glance
- 1See which account
Give each account its own photo, theme and sound.
- 2Quiet the work one
Mute work notifications in the evening without touching the rest.
- 3Logging out one
The other accounts stay signed in.
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