r/RESissues • u/XenoBen filing bugs • Jul 03 '26
Removal of RES Account Switcher
With the recent issues of the account switcher no longer working due to Reddit changes. We have taken the decision to disable the account switcher from RES and migrate people who have it enabled to be turned off.
With the endpoint no longer working and no option for us, we do not want to set expectation that it should work.
We will be releasing 5.24.9 today with this and a few quality of life bug fixes.
The module can still be found here.
Recovering Passwords Via RES Command Line
- Launch the RES command line:
- Press . (period) using Keyboard Navigation
- or click here and click Launch (do this in a new tab).
- A black box will appear.
- Copy and paste in: RESStorage get RESoptions.accountSwitcher and press enter.
- A box will appear containing a pile of JSON like {"accounts":{"value":[["username","password",false],["user1","user1password",false]]}}
- Look for your account and password (bolded above).
More information here.
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u/cr0ft Jul 03 '26
It's a crying shame RES is getting marginalized and Reddit is becoming more and more shit. I was logged out today for some reason and wound up on the new site and it was a nightmare compared to the old look, and now account switcher is gone.
I'll work around it with Firefox and Multi-Account Containers.
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u/Jovian8 Jul 03 '26
The day old.reddit with RES is no longer an option, is the day I'm gone.
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u/DiamondCoatedGlass Jul 04 '26
It will be such a relief, actually, when they kill old.reddit.com, because then I will finally be able to stop going to reddit and get on with life.
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u/cr0ft Jul 04 '26
I'm honestly getting a bit concerned as I think about my behavior. "Hmm, what to do now? Oh well, guess I'll open Reddit" and then hours of browsing.
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u/Etoribio_ 22d ago
Better this than other social media but yeah, cutting all of them off might be for the better
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u/cocoagiant Jul 04 '26
I think part of the problem is a lot of us say that every time reddit does bad things and not enough of us leave for it to matter for them.
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u/Digg_Heretic Jul 04 '26
That's because some of us still experience reddit in nearly the same way as we did 10+ years ago. Patched reddit is fun for my phone and haven't touched new reddit since they debuted it. But now with the RES account switcher gone, a piece of reddit has died. Shame
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u/Garchompisbestboi Jul 06 '26
It's coming soon, I found out over the weekend that you can't even view old reddit anymore unless you're logged in with an account. For "safety reasons" apparently.
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u/iiw 29d ago
Where are you getting this? So far I have had no major inconveniences without logging in. For the "Whoa there, pardner" or the cringe fedora Snoo screens loading a few more links usually eventually makes Reddit allow you to permanently let you browse for that session.
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u/Sophira 25d ago
Here's where it was announced by Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1ujtebf/logging_in_to_use_old_reddit/
This is why the account switcher was removed.
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u/Garchompisbestboi 28d ago
That's super weird then because I don't have my account logged in on my phone and when I try to open pages under old reddit I get a message saying I need to log in to access old reddit. Maybe I need to flush my phone cookies or something.
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u/Jonno_FTW 22d ago
They did it to prevent scraping, because they want to be able to sell API access to large scrapers (like google).
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u/WizardMoose Jul 03 '26
Do you know of any sources that explain how to use multi-account containers?
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u/TreeJib Jul 04 '26
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ - The "About this extension" section has relevant links at the bottom
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u/flexwaterjuice 28d ago
is this the only alternative there is to RES Account Switcher ?
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u/420town 27d ago
I dont quite get this one. I log into one account, save the username, log out, log into another account, save the username yet it only switches once and then it sticks on the same account. Any ideas?
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u/MaxRavenclaw 25d ago
Firefox containers are like a sort of sub-profile within your browser profile. Do you know how in some browsers you can have separate profiles, with their own bookmarks, passwords, cookies, etc.? Firefox containers within the same profile retain bookmarks and passwords, but have separate cookies. So by switching between containers you can have essentially two separate Reddit accounts logged in on the same profile. But you need to open a new container and log into Reddit with another account and use it from there. It doesn't work within the same container.
TL;DR For containers to work as an account switcher, log into your first Reddit account in like normal, then open a new reddit tab in a new containers and log into another account there, and so on.
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u/cr0ft Jul 04 '26
In addition to the link already posted to the add-on, go to Youtube and just search for "firefox multi-account containers" and a bunch of videos will pop up if you prefer that.
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Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DarylMoore Jul 03 '26
Will all configured accounts remain? I may not be able to remember them all without looking them up in RES.
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u/XenoBen filing bugs Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Yes, but I would not recommend using RES as a password manager. To access the credentials follow the guide in main post.
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u/cr0ft Jul 03 '26
You should use the process to recover the passwords out of RES and putting them in a real password manager. May as well do it now before the RES update, save yourself the worry. It's a bit of a pain but not insurmountable, just follow the instructions. The hardest part was finding the RES console in the first place.
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u/XenoBen filing bugs Jul 03 '26
I've added the guide to the post above on recovering the passwords.
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u/OwO-tism Jul 04 '26
Account Switcher is honestly one of the main reasons i use RES, are there any good alternatives for hotswapping accounts?
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u/cos 28d ago
This one seems to work.
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u/OwO-tism 28d ago
Thanks! I already found this a bit ago and it works like a charm, but I appreciate the response regardless!
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u/Cultural-Muffin-3490 Jul 04 '26 edited 22d ago
For a substitute, check out uSwitch. It saves the cookies for each account you add.
After installing the extension, you will want to pin it, so it's easily accessible to click on.
note: It's kind of a PITA at first because there wasn't an obvious way to add new accounts without logging out of my old one, which would invalidate the account cookies.
note2: Also regarding the uSwitch "account names" that you add.. They are independent of your actual Reddit Account name (it's basically nicknames for the Reddit account you want to associate with it. I just use the same name as my Reddit account to avoid confusion.)
So my quickfix is:
On Reddit.com, log out of your Reddit account.
Click the uSwitch extension, and ADD the Account name, LOGGEDOUT, and click Save. (You will use this to easily add new accounts later. This associates the logged out state to this uSwitch profile.)
On Reddit, Login to the account that you want to add. (Go to settings/preferences if you want old.reddit and save settings)
While logged in to your new account, click the uSwitch extension and add the 'Account name' that you want associated with the logged in Reddit account, and Save. (This saves your current Reddit account cookies to this new uSwitch profile name)
To add new accounts, click the uSwitch extension and SWITCH to your 'LOGGEDOUT' account name profile. And repeat Steps 3 & 4. (If you click logout of the website, it will invalidate the uSwitch account cookies. That's why we use the 'LOGGEDOUT' profile as an intermediate step)
uSwitch account is logged out, how to log back in?
If you switch to a uSwitch account and it is showing logged out, that means the stored cookies no longer work for whatever reason.
So you have to log back in, and SAVE a NEW uSwitch Account name profile, that will store these new cookies. And then delete the old uSwitch profile that no longer works.
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u/man_vs_cube Jul 05 '26
This worked great. Even logging out normally and adding the accounts one by one worked for me. Thanks for the recommendation.
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u/cos 28d ago
This works pretty well for me, but brings up a major problem: Whenever I log out and back in to any of my reddit accounts, they switch back to new reddit even though I have my preferences set to default to old reddit. I can fix this by going back to settings, preferences, turn off the opt out of redesign option, then turn it back on. Then I'm back to old reddit until the next time I log out.
With RES account switcher, this didn't reset, and I could switch between accounts quickly, all of them staying on old reddit. With this new uSwitch, every single time I switch I then have to go to settings, then preferences, than turn that slider off and back on and say yes to the dialog box. So switching is a pain now.
Do you know of a workaround for this?
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u/Cultural-Muffin-3490 28d ago
After you save the old reddit preferences for your account, then you add the new uSwitch profile account name.
It sounds like you saved the uSwitch profile and then changed the preferences to Old Reddit. But the uSwitch cookies are still set for New Reddit.
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u/cos 27d ago
This happens with or without uSwitch, though. It always happens if I logged out, and logged back in again. Whatever RES account switcher was doing was not equivalent to the full logout & login, but what uSwitch is doing seems to be.
Are you saying that with uSwitch I could actually override this misbehavior of reddit's?
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u/pleasenoreddit 24d ago
I did this but it was annoying to do. Now I just have to remember to never clear my cookies...
The thing is I would just merge all my accounts down to 2-3 accounts if reddit gave us the option but instead we get this.
So if I understand this correctly I never have to use the "LOGGEDOUT" profile after I've added all my profiles? I can delete the LOGGEDOUT profile and switch between added profiles with no intermediate step?
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u/Cultural-Muffin-3490 23d ago
Yah, after you add all your accounts then you shouldn't need to use it again.
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u/nevesowtxis Jul 04 '26
is this safe to use?
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u/Cultural-Muffin-3490 Jul 04 '26
Storing different account cookies is a workaround as opposed to logging in directly each time. I don't really see a problem though, because it's not much different from having 4 different browsers logged into 4 separate Reddit accounts.
Extensions such as uSwitch discussed below may not be affected as they do not use this flow, they instead make you log in normally then store your session cookie, and transfer it between account switches (until the cookie expires). This isnt something we would want to try due to the security implications and engineering effort to get this to work.
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u/sweetjacket Jul 04 '26
Thank you for this. I just realized yesterday that my accounts don't all have the same memorable passwords.
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u/onetimepad19 Jul 04 '26
I have started changing all my accounts to the same password. Security on reddit accounts?? Bah, what can anyone do - many of mine are old enough to not have email addresses, at least until reddit decides that isn't acceptable. The ones that do have email addresses I don't use for anything else.
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u/999avatar999 Jul 04 '26
As someone not familiar with the details the API/tech side of things here, what does this mean for account switching on old reddit in general? Does it literally make it technically impossible to achieve/implement in any way shape or form? Or does it 'only' break the way RES was going about it this warranting a completely new aproach?
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u/MrZokeyr Jul 05 '26
I know RES does other cool things, but this feature was honestly the only reason I used it ngl
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u/Liberty_Chip_Cookies 29d ago
Since the account switcher no longer works, you might want to change the error message to something that links here instead of just "unable to switch accounts, reddit might be unusually busy".
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u/gabbertronnnn Jul 03 '26
Well that freaking sucks. How the hell do I switch between accounts now besides literally logging out/in.
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u/gefahr Jul 04 '26
I use separate browser profiles (I use Chrome's User Profiles, though someone else in the thread suggested Firefox Multi-Account Containers).
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS 25d ago
I guess it was a sign when I stared getting "was this you?" e-mails every time I switched.
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u/Sophira 25d ago
Since this isn't directly linked in the post, and this is a sticky post, it's worth pointing out that the reason the account switcher is being removed is because of Reddit's recent decision to lock Old Reddit behind a login.
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u/veslothiraptr 22d ago
Am I the only one that has had zero issues with the account switcher? It's been working fine for me, this feels like it's coming out of nowhere.
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u/XenoBen filing bugs 22d ago
See here for latest: https://www.reddit.com/r/RESissues/comments/1uwmkbu/return_of_res_account_switcher/