Two VLC players at once on a Mac
Can you play two videos at once in VLC on a Mac?
Not in one VLC: on a Mac it plays one thing at a time. open -n -a VLC in Terminal starts a second VLC that shares your settings; a VLC copy made by Parallex is a second VLC you open with a click, with its own Dock icon, settings and recent items.
Watch or compare two videos side by side in two VLC players, each with its own window, Dock icon and settings, without typing a Terminal command each time.
How
- Install Parallex (below). Your VLC isn't changed.
- Choose New Instance and pick VLC. Name it for what it's for, like “VLC 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.
What you get with VLC
- Its own copy of VLC, 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 VLC, 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: VLC's own updater is turned off in the copy, and Parallex refreshes the copy when your VLC updates.
- Its own settings and recent items, so the second player can use another audio output or subtitle style than your VLC.
Tested every night
Parallex's compatibility lab makes a fresh copy of VLC 3.0.24 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
Can't I just use Terminal?
You can: open -n -a VLC starts a second VLC that shares your settings, and open -n -a VLC <file> opens a file in it. A copy is the same idea without Terminal, with its own Dock icon and settings.
Does it change my VLC?
No. Your VLC isn't touched; the copy lives beside it, and removing the instance moves it and its data to the Trash.
Get Parallex
Free to try, for macOS 14 and later. In Terminal:
curl -fsSL https://parallex.mandip.dev/install | shOr download the disk image, or with Homebrew: brew install --cask mandipadk/parallex/parallex. Then choose New Instance, pick VLC, and give it a name.
Already have Parallex?
This opens New Instance with VLC picked; you name it and choose its color.
Make a second VLC