Most of the time, when you install an app on your Mac and Android devices, it only allows you to use one account at a time on that device This works great when you only have one account in this app. But the problem arises when you have multiple accounts and want to use them all at the same time on one device.
One way to do this is to run multiple instances of the application. By default, your device does not offer this option, but there is a workaround to make it happen.
Use Terminal to run multiple instances of the same (Mac) application
On a Mac, Terminal lets you perform a number of tasks using various commands. It includes a command that allows you to run two or more instances of the application on your computer.
This way, you can run the application multiple times, each with its own independent container. Each instance will be isolated from the others to avoid confusion.
This is how you do it.
- Launch a terminal application from the launcher.
- When the terminal starts up, type the following command, press Space, drag the Mac application out of the Applications folder and press Enter.
open -n
- As an example, I’m going to run two instances of the Calculator application on my Mac. I would type in the following command and press Enter to do this.
open -n /Applications/Calculator.app
- The command will open an instance of your chosen application on your Mac. Run the command multiple times to run multiple instances of this application on your computer.
Running multiple instances of the same application using AppleScript
The terminal method works fine, but its main drawback is that you have to run the command every time you want to start an instance of the application.
If you often need multiple instances of an application running at the same time, using the terminal to complete a task may not be the best solution.
Luckily, your Mac allows predefined scripts to run, and you can use this feature to launch multiple instances of an application by simply double-clicking on the desktop icon. It’s as easy as launching an application on your computer.
Open Launchpad on your Mac and select Other and then Script Editor. The AppleScript Editor application starts.
Click “File” and then “New” to create a new application. Enter the following code into your application, replacing APP-PATH with the path to your Mac application.
run the “open -n APP-PATH” shell script
The command for the Calculator application will look like this.
run shell script “open -n /Applications/Calculator.app”
Click the Script menu and select Compile to compile the code.
Press Command + S to save the script. Enter a name for the script, choose Application from the File Format menu, and click Save.
Now when you want to run multiple instances of the application, just double-click the script you just saved and it will do the task for you. You can create a script for any of your applications, since all it needs as input is the path to the application on your computer.
Run multiple instances of an app with Parallel Space (Android)
Compared to Mac, the ability to run multiple instances of an app on an Android device is more useful. The reason is that you can run your favorite instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber with different phone numbers at the same time on your device.
There is no terminal on Android, so you need to download the app from the Google Play Store. The app is called Parallel Space
Install and run the application, then view the welcome screens. When the home screen appears, select the app you want to clone and click on “Add to Parallel Space” at the bottom.
Click on the app icon on the next screen and grant the required permissions.
The app will launch as if you were using it for the first time on your device.
Open two instances of an app using 2Accounts on Android
If Parallel Space didn’t work for you for some reason, you have another great app to help you create multiple instances of your apps.
Enter 2Accounts, which will allow you to do the same as the Parallel Space app.
Download the app from the official Google Play store and install it on your device.
Open the app, select the app you want to run multiple instances for, and click Enable at the bottom.
Click on your app on the next screen and an instance of it will launch on your device.
Now you can add your additional accounts to the newly created application instance and start using them right away.
If you no longer need an instance of the application, simply press and hold the application in any of the above applications and select “Uninstallâ€. It will delete the instance along with associated files from your device.
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