Keep Several PocketBase Admin Logins at Once

Every pbc admin command acts on one instance: the one you selected. Pointing the CLI at a second instance used to mean overwriting the first — pbc admin use <url>, log in again, and the previous token was gone unless you remembered to name it.

Two changes make juggling instances, and superusers, unremarkable:

• pbc admin login --url <url> creates the profile and signs in, in one step.
• pbc admin profiles lists everything you’ve saved.

Add an instance in one command

$ pbc admin login --url https://my-app-db.pocketbasecloud.com --name prod
Superuser email: [email protected]
Superuser password:
Logged in to https://my-app-db.pocketbasecloud.com (prod).

The profile is named after the URL unless --name gives it something shorter, so you can tell two instances apart without re-reading their hostnames.

Several superusers on one instance

An instance can have more than one superuser: one for you, one for CI, one you share with a teammate. Profiles are keyed by name, not by URL, so all of them can point at the same instance and each keeps its own token. The saved email is there to tell them apart:

$ pbc admin profiles
ACTIVE  NAME  URL                                     ACCOUNT          STATUS
*       prod  https://my-app-db.pocketbasecloud.com    [email protected]  authenticated
        ci    https://my-app-db.pocketbasecloud.com    [email protected]   authenticated

Switching, per command or for good

pbc admin use <url> still selects an instance and makes it the default. pbc admin use --name <profile> switches the default to an already-saved profile without re-typing its URL, and --profile <name> picks one for a single command:

pbc admin use --name prod                    # default from now on
pbc admin collections ls                     # against prod
pbc admin records ls posts --profile ci      # against ci, just this once

pbc admin whoami shows the active profile. pbc admin logout --profile ci --remove forgets one. The profiles live in ~/.config/pbc/config.json (mode 600), the same file as your cloud login, so --json scripting and PBC_TOKEN keep working unchanged.

New to the CLI? Start with Installing the CLI, then Managing Your Instance and the CLI Cookbook.