MacOS: Start new instance of TeXstudio

Question

[MacOS 10.13.3, TeXstudio 2.12.8]

How do you start a new TeXstudio instance?

open /Applications/texstudio.app --start-always is not recognised and returns the Usage information, whilst open /Applications/texstudio.app -n does not create a new instance as the help information states and instead simply flashes the MacOS Menu Bar.

I tried copying the texstudio.app to another name and running it, but it didn't create a new instance either. Is this possible?

Answer 1

To start a new instance:

/Applications/texstudio.app/Contents/MacOS/texstudio --start-always 

(without open and with the full path to the binary)

Answer 2

The right terminal command is /Applications/texstudio.app/Contents/MacOS/texstudio --start-always, but you will need to keep the terminal open.

---

You can create an application with Automator (see here and here) to start new instances every time:

1. open Automator and create a new Application
2. to add Run Shell Script drag and drop it from the list; might need these settings Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input: as arguments
3. insert the code below; if necessary adjust the path to your TeXstudio executable

Code

nohup /Applications/texstudio.app/Contents/MacOS/texstudio --start-always > /dev/null 2>&1 &

4. save the script as an application (!)

You can now place this into your application folder.

note

If you have a look at the jupyter-version, you might think it could also work when opening files. However, I have not yet tried to re-associate files with this script in order to open a new instance for every file (since you can open other files as usual, e.g. drag and drop). This would also need some logic to differentiate between plain calls and calls with file-paths passed, I guess.