Simultaneously using multiple accounts with Skype 4.0

As an addendum to my earlier post, I’ve just noticed that a) Skype 4.0 Beta 2 runs pretty stable on Windows Vista 64 and b) has built-in support for managing multiple Skype accounts! With the help of this feature, you could for example set up a private account and a business account and use both of them at the same time, using the same Windows user account. The setup is straightforward:

1) Install Skype 4.0 Beta 2

2) Create a shortcut to Skype.exe and place it on the quick launch bar. Rename the shortcut to “Skype Private Account”, for example. Start Skype using this shortcut and setup your first account (in this case, your private account).

3) Create another shortcut to Skype.exe (add it to the quick launch bar, too) and name it “Skype Business Account”. Open the “Properties” dialog of this shortcut by right-clicking on it. In the “Target” text field of the properties dialog box, append ” /secondary” (without double quotes) to the Skype.exe path that is already there. For example, in my case, the “Target” text field contains:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe” /secondary

Rename this shortcut to “Skype Business Account” (right-click->rename). Having done this, start Skype using this shortcut. Skype will then prompt you to enter the credentials of another Skype account of yours (in this example, of your business account).

You can also choose different icons for the two shortcuts. Further, I’d assume the /secondary feature isn’t limited to managing two Skype accounts, though I haven’t tested it with more than two accounts. The main advantage of this “/secondary” feature is that you don’t need to have a separate Windows user account for each of your Skype accounts. Note however that, even with this solution, a new instance of Skype will be created for each of your Skype accounts – every instance consuming about 40 MB of RAM.

I think that’s a very useful feature and I like it a lot.