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Often I need to work on two qgis projects at the same time. How can I launch two separate instances of QGIS?

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4 Answers 4

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This is not necessarily specific to QGIS but is a question I often get with QGIS users needing to reference two projects at the same time.

open a terminal window and type:

open -n /Applications/QGIS.app

Or for QGIS3, open a terminal window and type:

open -n /Applications/QGIS3.app

this format will work with any application:

open -n /Applications/Application.app

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  • or directly /Applications/QGIS.app/Contents/MacOS/QGIS without open
    – gene
    Commented Apr 14, 2016 at 16:24
  • This works, but keeps the terminal output active--which one might want, but if you just want to open an instance w/o any additional terminal output, use 'open -n'
    – jamierob
    Commented Mar 28, 2017 at 18:02
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You can make an Automator script to launch as many QGIS instances as you want.

Create a new Automator application process.

Add « Run shell script action »

and type this:

/Applications/QGIS3.8.app/Contents/MacOS/QGIS

done

If you stop the running process, QGIS will still run and you'll be able to launch a third, a fourth, etc instance of QGIS.

enter image description here

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Under MacOS 10.15.7 Catalina, opening the app directly in Automator would not create a new instance if QGIS was already running.

This Automator code worked for me: make a new Automator Application, add "Run Shell Script" with options "Shell: /bin/zsh" and "Pass input: as arguments", with this command:

open -n -a  /Applications/QGIS.app/Contents/MacOS/QGIS $argv

Save this as "QGIS New Instance.app" in your /Applications folder. This has the advantage that you can drop a file on the Automator Application and have it open in QGIS. Of course, you have to adjust the path to where you keep QGIS.

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With an already open instance of QGIS, typing qgis into the command line in the terminal opens a subsequent instance of QGIS

Tested on Max M1 with QGIS 3.30.1

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    Commented Jun 2, 2023 at 7:48

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