Do you want to instantly switch between user accounts in WordPress? Sometimes when testing new features on your website, you may need to switch back and forth between user accounts with different user roles. While you can manually log out and login to the new account, it’s not the most efficient use of your time. In this article, we will show you how to instantly switch between user accounts in WordPress.
Why and When Do You Need to Switch User Accounts?
By default, WordPress allows you to add new users and authors to your website. Each user on your website has a user role assigned to them which gives them permissions to perform different tasks on your website.
You can also allow users to register on your website and set a default user role for all new users by visiting the Settings » General page.
As the site owner, you are automatically assigned the administrator user role on your website. This gives you complete control including the ability to manage all user accounts.
While testing new features on your website, you may need to see how things would look for users with different user roles and permissions. This is particularly essential when you are running a WordPress membership website or an online store. The manual way to do this is to simply log in using the credentials for each user account and test those features.
However, this would take a lot of time. Wouldn’t it be better if you could just switch to any user account instantly and then switch back when you are done testing?
Let’s take a look at how to instantly switch between user accounts in WordPress without entering passwords.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or want text instructions, then continue reading.
Using a Plugin to Instantly Switch Between User Accounts
First you need to install and activate the User Switching plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Once activated, you need to go to the Users page in your WordPress admin. On this page, you will see a ‘Switch to’ link next to each user account.
User switching is only available for users with an administrator user role. Once you have switched to a new user account, you can continue testing your website logged in as that user.
Once you are done, you can switch back to your own user account by clicking on the notification displayed on the screen.
We hope this article helped you instantly switch between user accounts in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to allow website visitors to submit blog posts in WordPress without logging into your website.
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Amer Saeed says
when switched to a woocomerce user account,
how can i come back to administrator account ?
WPBeginner Support says
There should be the option at the top of admin pages you look at or in the admin toolbar of your site to swap back
Admin
Beth Coleman says
Thanks for sharing this great resource of information – ALL very useful to my business.
Cynthia says
Humm that plug-in sounds scary as he_ _. I’m just envisioning a glitch where you can’t get your admin role back, or even worse a hacker exploiting that plug-in getting into user accounts by bypassing passwords. Yikes.
Think I’ll stick with the extra minute it takes to log in as a different user.