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Cleanest way to open multiple instances of the same app at the same time

D

danqi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 14, 2010
238
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I am managing multiple Discord accounts that I would like to have open at the same time. I know that Discord has been supporting account switching for a while now, but it a bit clunky and slow.

What is the simplest and most robust way of having multiple instances of Discord open at the same time, each with a different account?

Different browsers? Or is there a way to run multiple instances of the app without running into any problems down the line?
 
Have you tried simply duplicating the Discord app in your Applications folder and naming them Discord1.app and Discord2.app (then logging in to the different accounts in the separate apps)?

This works for a lot of apps.
 
MacGizmo said:
Have you tried simply duplicating the Discord app in your Applications folder and naming them Discord1.app and Discord2.app (then logging in to the different accounts in the separate apps)?

This works for a lot of apps.
Click to expand...
I have not. Mostly because I thought that would lead to problems with preferences and such. I was afraid to corrupt anything.
 
Macs don’t generally support multiple instances very well. I too would be concerned about your preference issue. You could consider running another copy in a virtual MacOS.
 
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chabig said:
Macs don’t generally support multiple instances very well. I too would be concerned about your preference issue. You could consider running another copy in a virtual MacOS.
Click to expand...
I've never done that. Do you have any tips / resources regarding that?
 
danqi said:
Different browsers? Or is there a way to run multiple instances of the app without running into any problems down the line?
Click to expand...

Sorry to admit that I know absolutely nothing about discord. Is it a website/web app, as your post suggests? If so, then different browsers should work. Each browser has its own storage, so there wouldn't be any issues with the preferences or other data that it stores.

Otherwise, a virtual machine would work. If you're using an Intel Mac, you could use a MacOS VM.
 
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danqi said:
I am managing multiple Discord accounts that I would like to have open at the same time. I know that Discord has been supporting account switching for a while now, but it a bit clunky and slow.

What is the simplest and most robust way of having multiple instances of Discord open at the same time, each with a different account?

Different browsers? Or is there a way to run multiple instances of the app without running into any problems down the line?
Click to expand...
Try using Terminal to open a second instance.

open -n /Applications/appname.app
 

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Tagbert said:
Try using Terminal to open a second instance.

open -n /Applications/appname.app
Click to expand...
While open -n could open a new instance of the app, I imagine they will have shared settings. I doubt two instances will be able to generate and use separate cookies for authentication.
Probably the only viable option is to use multiple browsers.
 
Thanks for the info everybody! I will look into setting up a VM as I prefer the desktop app to the browser. But that also might be overkill and using multiple browsers might be the more reasonable approach.
 
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danqi said:
Thanks for the info everybody! I will look into setting up a VM as I prefer the desktop app to the browser. But that also might be overkill and using multiple browsers might be the more reasonable approach.
Click to expand...
sorry I'm late to post here, but just in case anyone else is coming here looking for the same answer.

I've tried replicating the Discord.app in the Finder and renaming it to the account I want to use, and I've also tried the aforementioned Terminal command. Neither work as I expected because of the fact that Discord.app is one of those stupid Electron applications that is actually a Chrome web browser with a fancy skin. When you have one instance of Discord.app running, you are actually not using that binary directly. Discord.app is for the lack of a better word, just a launcher. If you open up Activity Monitor and do a search for Discord you will see various instances of Discord Helper running, in particular Discord Helper (Renderer). This is where most everything is getting done.

So when you launch a copy of Discord.app, it goes to launch the Discord Helper apps and sees that it is already running and effectively quits itself.

So, yeah, unless you hack the code to open different instances of the Helper apps, this isn't going to work; it's not going to work anyway because every time Discord auto updates itself, these changes are going to get destroyed.

So, so, so yeah, as someone else mentions you're going to have to use some sort of virtualization to run a separate OS for each of the accounts that you want to run in Discord at the same time. I think a huge waste of resources on your computer.

The best way to really do this and still have access to things like your shared clipboard to copy between the multiple accounts is to use a web browser that has the ability to segment the cookies like the new Safari's Profiles, Firefox's official Containers plug-in, or a Multiple account extension in Chrome or Chromium (which probably is best because it's a Chrome app). Then you can keep them all open at the same time along with your Discord.app.

It would be best if the official Discord community comes up with an ability to do this, but I don't see it happening.
 
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Hey there,

I actually managed to get this working. Discord supports this functionality natively by launching it with the --multi-instance argument, which I'm already using on Windows.
To do this on mac you can paste open -n -b com.hnc.Discord --args --multi-instance into Terminal and run for as many instances as you want.
Or for a bit neater option use Script Editor which comes preinstalled in your Utilities folder (in Launchpad or inside Applications folder). Create a new script, paste do shell script "open -n -b com.hnc.Discord --args --multi-instance", then follow Apple's Guide to save your script as an app.
  1. With a script open in the Script Editor app
    38c73aa786484e6ecb62265ed0b27864.png
    on your Mac, choose File > Export.
  2. Enter a name for the app.
  3. To save your app in a different location than shown, click the disclosure triangle, then select a folder.
  4. Click the File Format pop-up menu, then choose Application.
  5. Select any combination of options:
    • Show startup screen: Displays a dialog with the text from the script’s Description field when the script is run. The dialog also contains Run and Quit buttons that allow you to stop or continue the script execution.
    • Stay open after run handler: Causes the app to remain active until you quit it. Choose this option if the script contains an idle handler.
    • Run-only: Saves only the compiled version of the app. Choose this option if you don’t want the script source included in the app bundle.
  6. Click Save.
To change the icon of your new app select it and press ⌘+I. A small window will open. Then simply drag and drop your desired image on top of the icon next to the name in the top left corner. For example, to make it look like Discord, locate Discord.app (usually in your Applications folder), then just drag the app over the old icon and drop when
a
copy.png
plus in a green circle appears.

And there you go, you just made your very own DiscordDuplicator™ :cool:
 
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