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Android (Stock android) has a feature that enables Android to support multiple user profiles. Note this has nothing to do with online accounts such as a Google account.

Within the phone you can define profiles and switch from one account to other effectively running apps and other staff separately.

This is what I mean: https://www.howtogeek.com/333484/how-to-set-up-multiple-user-profiles-on-android/

In practice I found out most phones disable this feature. For instance Samsung and Oppo devices do not have it. Others have it. In the specs of the phones they never mention this feature, i.e. by looking at the specs of a phone I cannot know if it is enabled or not.

Is there any way to get a list of all devices which offer this feature?

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    Multiple profiles are always enabled, multiple users are enabled or disabled by OEM / ROM developer. And it entirely depends on their mood AFAIU.
    – Irfan Latif
    Mar 3, 2020 at 12:55
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    @Irfan Do you know if there is a property one can read out to check if multiple users are available or not? If there is a property the value may be searchable by public property dumps...
    – Robert
    Mar 3, 2020 at 16:27
  • @Robert I'm not aware of any standard property. There's a feature (pm list features | grep android.software.managed_users) but that shows fully-managed/BYOD profiles capability (and is always available AFAI have seen). config_enableMultiUserUI and config_multiuserMaximumUsers are set using framework overlay, so all framework-res*.apk in /system/framework or /vendor/overlay/ can be dumped using apktool to check the value. But it doesn't make sense, it's easy to check device settings if device is in hand.
    – Irfan Latif
    Mar 3, 2020 at 17:59

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It's very rare, even impossible to find out whether multiple users feature is included on a specific model. From my experience, only a handful of manufacturers keep this feature turned on on their Android devices. Mostly not very famous Chinese brands like: Wieppo, Ulefone, Oukitel, and Oppo. Why do other big manufacturers turn off this great feature of Android? It is stupid.

The only fast and easy way to know whether a device is capable of running multiple users is to just see a working model in a shop and check if you can spot an avatar in the right corner or in Settings.

The bad thing is only with this current pandemic is that visiting an electronics or phone shop can be quite a hassle/dangerous.

image of Android multi-user screen

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  • Thank you so much. Yes I think the same. Indeed sometimes I checked the phones in the stores to see if they have this feature. But as it is so rare, I found it inefficient. Yes and wondering too, why not many models have this feature, I'd love it.
    – Kakatua
    Apr 28, 2021 at 10:20
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Many new phones that appear support this feature. the function is valid since android 5 but of course, it also depends on the device you have. All the new phones that appear like Samsung, Lenovo, Apple,.. support these functions. If you wanna be 100% sure go online and search for the phone you want to see the specifications.

Good luck! 🥀

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