Two Cursor accounts or setups on one Mac
Keep a second Cursor account in a second Cursor on the same Mac: both open at once, each signed in to its own account, with its own notifications and Dock icon. Parallex is free and open source.
How
- Install Parallex (below). Your Cursor isn't changed.
- Choose New Instance and pick Cursor. Name it for what it's for, like “Cursor Work”, and give it a color.
- Open it and sign in with the other account. Both run at once, each in its own windows, each with its own Dock icon.
What you get with Cursor
- Its own copy of Cursor, with its own Dock icon, name and color, its own notifications, and its own macOS permissions.
- Its own Library and keychain, so its sign-in, settings and caches are separate from your other Cursor, and it has its own encryption key in the keychain.
- Guard keeps the copy out of the original's data, and the isolation check shows what the copy has opened of yours.
- Kept up to date by Parallex: Cursor's own updater is turned off in the copy, and Parallex refreshes the copy when your Cursor updates.
- Share settings (an option): the copy uses your Cursor's settings, keybindings, snippets and extensions, kept in step, while its sign-in and projects stay its own.
- Its
~/.cursoris its own, so extensions and state don't cross over unless you share them. - Sign-in links go to the right Cursor:
cursor://links reach the copy you signed in from. - In a workspace with its own identity, the copy's terminal commits and pushes as that workspace (its git name, gh, cloud sign-ins).
Tested every night
Parallex's compatibility lab makes a fresh copy of Cursor 3.19.13 every night on a clean Mac and opens it. On October 1, 2026, on macOS 26.6.2, the copy ran, and nothing reached the original's data. Its copies have run clean on all 2 nights since September 30. See every app's latest result.
Good to know
- With Share settings on, keep Cursor's own Settings Sync off in the copy.
Questions
Do I have to set it up again?
No: turn on Share settings and it starts with yours. Only the sign-in and projects are separate.
Get Parallex
Free and open source, for macOS 14 and later. In Terminal:
curl -fsSL https://parallex.mandip.dev/install | shOr download it from GitHub, or with Homebrew: brew tap mandipadk/parallex https://github.com/mandipadk/parallex then brew install --cask parallex. Then choose New Instance, pick Cursor, and give it a name.
Already have Parallex?
This opens New Instance with Cursor picked; you name it and choose its color.
Make a second Cursor