Login to Facebook as a different user

When you login to Facebook on your own computer, or sign in from a cell phone or laptop, these are your machines, and you are probably the only user: this means that you can safely make Facebook remember your password, and automatically login to your account. But what happens when you can't use your mobile device or your own desktop computer / laptop? Well, since Facebook is a "web app", or online application, you can access your profile from anywhere you have an internet connection. Likewise, when someone wants to check their Facebook account from your computer: all they need is temporary access to your machine. This tutorial shows you a couple of ways in which you can login to Facebook as a different user (whether this is you, or another person to whom you lend access to your PC / Mac).

Check your Facebook profile when someone is already signed in

Let's assume in this tutorial that you are the one who wants to check your Facebook profile from someone else's computer, just reverse the roles if you are about to let a friend check his or her Facebook from your machine instead. We will show you three different techniques that allow different users to login to their own Facebook profile - your choice will be dictated by the scenario that best fits your own situation.

Check Facebook from the same browser, without logging out anyone!

The first scenario is that Facebook to automatically sign in; if this is the case, logging into another Facebook will mean to logout the current user, and then start from scratch and login to Facebook using your own credentials (email address and password). But this is not necessarily the case. The easiest way to login to Facebook without disturbing the peace is to use a temporary session, that will not logout anyone from their profile: in that case, you can use the private browsing feature that most modern web browsers include. See how you can anonymously login to Facebook: without the need to install any software, or use a different user account on that computer, this is the simplest approach.

Login to Facebook as a different user without using private browsing

There is also another solution, which may be more practical, especially if you and others are often sharing the same computer. Since each of you has his or her own Facebook profile, the simplest method may just be to each use a different browser: that way, each person's browsing history is kept separate.

Tip: When you set Facebook to automatically sign in, your web browser creates a "cookie" (small text file) behind the scenes, used to tell Facebook that it should go straight to the last Facebook profile that was logged in, not the generic homepage. These cookies are only available to that browser, which is why using different web browsers for different users on the same computer (even for the same Mac / Windows user account) allows you to each remain logged in to your profile.

Use a different user account on your computer to check your own Facebook

This is a perfect solution if everyone trusts everyone else, but can be cumbersome otherwise. If you prefer not to keep your Facebook profiles to easily accessible, you have one last choice, which is to each use a different user profile for the computer itself (like a separate Mac or Windows user account, to which you need to logon and logoff as needed - using the "Switch user" feature or not).

And these are three ways in which you can login to Facebook as a different user based on your comfort level, the frequency with which you need to access your Facebook account from another person's computer (or themselves from your own machine), etc. As a final tip, keep in mind that usually, the most convenient option is also the least secure: if you don't absolutely feel at peace without protecting access to your Facebook profile, take the long route and use a different user account altogether.