Parallex or the web version in another browser?
The simplest way to a second account is often the app for one and the website for the other. It's free, and it works for most big services. It stops working for apps without a website, and the website isn't always the whole app.
At a glance
| Parallex | The web version | |
|---|---|---|
| Works for | Any Mac app, and any website | Services that have a website |
| Features | The whole app | What the website has |
| Notifications | The app's own, from a copy with its own name | From the browser, if you allow them |
| In the Dock | Its own icon; website instances show the unread count as a badge | The browser's icon, or a web app's with Safari's Add to Dock |
| Cost | Free to try | Free |
When the web version is enough
For a second account you check now and then, in a service with a good website (WhatsApp Web, Slack, Discord, Teams, Gmail), the browser does it for free. Safari's File › Add to Dock (macOS Sonoma and later) even gives it a Dock icon of its own.
When Parallex is better
- The app has no website, or the website does less: editors like Cursor, VS Code and Zed, Obsidian, Spotify's app, the Claude and ChatGPT apps.
- You want both accounts as the same app, behaving the same way, each with its own notifications.
- You'd like the website as an app of its own in more browsers than Safari: Parallex's website instances work for any site, each with its own sign-in, cookies, notifications and Dock badge.
Questions
Is a Parallex website instance just a browser window?
It's an app of its own: a copy of Parallex Web, a small WebKit app that ships with Parallex, with its own Dock icon, sign-in, cookies and notifications, apart from Safari and from every other instance. Links to other sites open in your browser.
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.