Native macOS menu-bar app
Most switchers move the credential and leave you to discover what else they changed.
This one restores only the auth fields, verifies which account you actually landed on,
and rolls back if it cannot finish. Your settings.json, MCP servers, and
hooks are never touched.
Built for more than one login
A switch that goes wrong costs more than the switch saved. Every change is scoped to the credential, checked afterwards, and reversible.
Every account, one view
The CLI shows one identity at a time, and a switch that moves the credential without moving the identity will happily bill the wrong employer. See every saved account, which one the CLI is really logged into, what each has left, and how old each reading is.
Transactional switching
It stages rollback material, restores only the auth fields, then verifies the account it landed on. If another process rewrites a credential mid-switch, that change wins and the switch aborts rather than overwriting it.
Useful, optional warnings
Get a notification when an account is nearly depleted—or likely ready to use again. You choose which alerts are enabled.
Usage history
Local history helps reveal how quickly a limit is moving and whether the current pace is sustainable.
Up and running in minutes
There are no API keys to paste and no new account system to create. Limit Lifeboat works with the CLI logins you already use.
Download the signed DMG or install the cask with Homebrew. Limit Lifeboat lives in the menu bar.
Log in with claude or codex login. On refresh, the active account registers itself.
Watch usage, choose warnings, and switch a CLI only when you decide it is time.
Local-first by design
Limit Lifeboat handles sensitive CLI authentication material with explicit boundaries, identity checks, and protected recovery.
Unrelated CLI settings, MCP servers, instructions, and local history stay in place.
A switch completes only after the selected account is confirmed; failed changes roll back safely.
Temporary rollback material is restricted and removed after a verified switch or recovery.
Switching must update provider-owned CLI files. The release entitlement is limited to optional Terminal automation.
The question everyone asks second
Short answer: holding more than one account is normal, and this app does not do the thing providers actually prohibit.
Sharing one account between people, and reselling or proxying subscription inference through third-party harnesses. Limit Lifeboat does neither. It never sends your credentials anywhere, never routes a model request, and never gives two people access to one subscription.
It moves your own logins between your own accounts on your own Mac, using the same credential store and the same official CLI you already use. Quotas are enforced by the provider, per account, exactly as before. Nothing is pooled, merged, or extended.
The common case is an employer-provisioned account plus a personal one. Both vendors have declined to build switching — the request has been open on Claude Code since January 2026 with several hundred upvotes — so people do it by hand with scripts that overwrite their config.
Use only accounts you are authorized to use, and follow whatever policy your employer sets for the account they gave you. That is your call to make, not this app's. It will not create accounts, and it will not touch a browser or desktop-app session.
Practical guides
Start with the official CLI path, learn what changes during an account switch, and choose the setup that fits your work and personal accounts.
The official login flow, why repeated logins get awkward, and how to change authentication without replacing the rest of your CLI configuration.
Read the guide → TroubleshootingThe credential and the displayed identity live in different places, and they can disagree. Here is how to check rather than assume.
Read the guide → Policy and boundariesSeparating the things providers actually prohibit from the things people assume they prohibit, without telling you your setup is fine.
Read the guide →Free, signed, and notarized
Free, open source, and made for Apple Silicon Macs.
Download the latest signed and notarized release, then drag Limit Lifeboat to Applications.
Download for MacInstall from the personal tap. The cask uses the same published DMG as the GitHub release.
brew install --cask Johannes-Berggren/tap/limit-lifeboatFull install instructions, requirements, and update behaviour
Questions, answered
Still stuck? The support page has troubleshooting steps and the right place to report an issue.
Visit supportOnly the selected provider's authentication fields. settings.json, MCP server definitions, hooks, permissions, instructions, and local history are left byte-for-byte alone. The app captures the current login first, stages rollback material, then verifies the restored identity before it cleans up.
It rolls back. If another process rewrote a credential while the switch was running, that external change wins and the switch aborts rather than overwriting it. If a safe rollback is not possible, the app keeps a protected recovery directory and tells you, instead of guessing.
Yes. Each saved account has its own identity, usage reading, and Keychain-protected credential snapshot. Quotas stay separate and provider-enforced; nothing is pooled or merged. Use only accounts you are authorized to access and follow the provider and workplace policies that apply to them.
It supports Claude subscription accounts used by Claude Code and ChatGPT subscription accounts used by the Codex CLI. You can use either provider or both.
Only if you turn that on, and it is off by default. When enabled, it moves off the active account at 5% session remaining or 1% weekly remaining, follows your saved priority order, and requires the target account to have at least 30% headroom and to be at least 20 points better than the one you are leaving.
No. Browser, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT Desktop, and CLI sessions are separate. Limit Lifeboat switches the corresponding command-line tool only.
It checks the signed update feed once a day by default, but it never installs silently. Every update requires you to choose Install and Relaunch.
Profiles and usage history stay in your user Library. App-managed credential snapshots are encrypted by macOS Keychain. There is no product analytics, advertising, or telemetry.
Not in version 1.1.10. Limit Lifeboat requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or newer.
Change which account the CLI uses without changing anything else.