Android is making it even easier to swipe away your work life when you get home

Android has long since had the ability to add Work or managed profiles and let you compartmentalize your life. Turning off work when you get home so you can focus on your family and personal data, and vice versa when you get to the office or start performing office tasks.

With what we believe is Android 13, and perhaps other versions as well, Google is introducing the ability to quickly swap between your work and personal life with a new account switcher trick. Instead of having to tap the profile picture in the top right of a Google app like Gmail and choose “Switch to work Gmail”, you’ll instead just need to perform a quick left or right swipe on your image!

Anyone who uses multiple profiles regularly will know they can swipe down on their picture to jump to other personal accounts or even paid Workspace accounts that are not managed. In fact, I do this daily for a big handful of Google Accounts (the Gmail bug not withstanding).

This new trick was discovered by Android Police, and their reader, Ramit Suri, and can be seen demonstrated below. I particularly like how a personal or suitcase icon appears in the center of the screen briefly to indicate the jump.

Apparently, it was announced at the Android Enterprise Partner Summit – an event that isn’t broadcast to us regular folk. Let us know in the comments if this is working for you. Also, I’d be interested in knowing whether you employ Android work profiles for your team or if you just let them use Workspace accounts unmanaged.