The discussion revolves around adding a ‘stop impersonating’ link to the user avatar dropdown in Discourse when impersonating a user. Currently, users must log out and log back in to stop impersonating, which is seen as inconvenient. Several users, including mcwumbly, sam, and John_Lehmann, suggest adding a direct button to the interface for this purpose. The feature was considered minor but useful, with some users like lisajill and jtbayly highlighting its practicality. The idea of a banner indicating impersonation, as proposed by John_Lehmann, is supported by others like jord8on. The community also discusses the privacy implications of impersonation, with Cozdabuch expressing concerns about user privacy, especially in internal communication platforms. sam suggests a broader rethink of the impersonation feature, noting it was implemented as a hack and could be redesigned to be less invasive. The discussion concludes with the announcement that an experimental feature has been merged, allowing users to impersonate without logging out, which is praised by ted and nathank.
As far as I’m aware, there is currently no way to ‘stop impersonating’ a user. In order to do this now, you have to log out, and then log back in as yourself.
It’d be nice if there were a link to ‘stop impersonating’ the user in the user avatar dropdown menu:
We would need to start tracking that you are impersonating for that to work 
Well, wouldn’t mind that Discourse would track that. 
Totally for fixing this, its just a bit hairy.
Are you really impersonating users so much that this is a problem? Seems like a lot of work for little benefit.
No, its a very minor issue. Consider this documentation for the workaround until such a time its deemed worthy of attention.
Ran into this myself right now. Still corner-case, but it is rather annoying when it does happen, just for the record ^^
Even a “secret” URL shortcut to get you back would be a great first step. I could be made aware of such a trick via the admin guide.
Would the mechanics for switching out of anonymous mode be applicable to this feature?
I can implement it, but I don’t want to gold plate impersonation, logging when someone impersonates has to come first
Looking forward to having this option. I end up impersonating folks quite a lot as we develop features/test things out and it is a huge hassle to get out of it since I have to go through multiple screens to re-login (due to SSO).
Was this ever implemented?
Nope, did not happen, I feel odd adding more polish around impersonation
So what is the workaround?
I think he was referring to this:
@Sam Sorry for reviving this old post but since impersonations are now logged could this feature be built in the future or is it in your list of things to work on?
Still not tracked per auth token, we would need a new column for that.
Over the years I have had so little motivation to do anything here short of adding tracking, I feel like impersonation is simply something to be avoided, the friction here can be seen as a feature.
Though I understand your reticence to improve it, I hardly think trapping people in a mode you want them to avoid makes sense as a feature. It has legitimate uses, which is why it was added and why I use it.
I don’t really mind being forced to logout to quit impersonating though. The problem is that I can’t figure out how to logout without clearing their notification count (because I have to click on their profile menu to get to the logout menu item.) This is confusing and unhelpful for the user being helped via impersonation.
Is there a url I can visit to logout directly? Or is there some other way to avoid this problem?
Simplest workaround is:
/u/USERNAME/preferences/accountIf you are in the habit of always impersonating from an incognito session this should be fairly easy.
Thanks for the solution as well as the tip about using incognito mode.
A loud banner at the top to indicate impersonation, with a button on it to release the account would be a great way to round out this functionality.
This is what django-hijack looks like:
