A second IINA with its own settings on one Mac

Can you run two IINA players at once on a Mac?

IINA can already open each video in a window of its own, so most people don't need a second IINA. A copy made by Parallex is for a separate setup: its own preferences, playback history and plugins, with its own Dock icon.

Keep a separate IINA setup beside your own: its own preferences, playback history and plugins, with its own Dock icon, for a second screen, a presentation, or videos you'd rather not see in your history.

How

Install Parallex (below). Your IINA isn't changed.
Choose New Instance and pick IINA. Name it for what it's for, like “IINA 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.

Or without Parallex: every way to run an app twice on a Mac, compared.

Parallex's main window, listing instances of several apps, each with its own color and name — Each instance gets its own name and color, so you always know which one you're in.

What you get with IINA

Its own copy of IINA, 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 IINA, 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: IINA's own updater is turned off in the copy, and Parallex refreshes the copy when your IINA updates.
Its own preferences, history and plugins, kept in its own Library, so changing one player's setup leaves the other's alone.

Tested every night

Parallex's compatibility lab makes a fresh copy of IINA 1.5.0 every night on a clean Mac and opens it. On October 4, 2026, on macOS 26.6.2, the copy ran, and nothing reached the original's data. Its copies have run clean on all 5 nights since September 30. See every app's latest result.

Good to know

A copy can't use iCloud sync, push notifications or Sign in with Apple, which belong to the original's signature. Apps that don't use them aren't affected.

Questions

Doesn't IINA already play two videos at once?

It can open each video in a window of its own, so for watching two at once you don't need a second IINA. A copy is for a second setup, with its own settings and history.

Get Parallex

Free to try, for macOS 14 and later. In Terminal:

curl -fsSL https://parallex.mandip.dev/install | sh

Or download the disk image, or with Homebrew: brew install --cask mandipadk/parallex/parallex. Then choose New Instance, pick IINA, and give it a name.

Already have Parallex?

This opens New Instance with IINA picked; you name it and choose its color.

Make a second IINA

Also

VLCTwo VLC players at once on a Mac SpotifyTwo Spotify accounts on one Mac