MacDupl
Clone any Mac app into a fully isolated instance
106 followers
Clone any Mac app into a fully isolated instance
106 followers
MacDupl clones the Mac apps you already use into fully isolated instances — separate logins, separate data, separate Dock icons. Work and personal, side by side.
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Hey Product Hunters 👋
I'm Sigit, maker of MacDupl.
What inspired me to build this
I was tired of logging out of my personal Slack just to log into a client's, over and over 😭
Tried browser profiles, separate Mac users, extra browsers — all annoying in their own way.
What I actually wanted was dumb simple: another copy of the app, its own icon, own login, sitting right next to the original.
So I built it. macOS actually makes this possible with APFS copy-on-write — cloning a 700MB app costs basically nothing on disk.
A few weekends later, MacDupl was born 🚀
The problem
If you use the same app for work and personal — or juggle multiple client accounts in one tool — you know the loop: log out, log back in, log out again. Browser profiles half-solve it for browsers, but there was nothing for native Mac apps. I wanted a real second instance of the app itself: separate login, separate data, its own icon in the Dock — not a workaround.
How the approach evolved
Early on I looked at container/VM-based isolation to sandbox apps more heavily — more "bulletproof" in theory, but it added real complexity and UX tradeoffs that worked against the whole point (this was supposed to feel instant, not heavy). I ended up going with a lighter approach: unique bundle identifiers plus separate data directories per clone, using `--use-mock-keychain` so credentials stay isolated without ever touching the shared macOS Keychain. It's simpler, and it's fast — clones build in about 2 seconds.
That constraint also shaped what MacDupl *won't* do: some App Store / sandboxed apps (their entitlements and shared containers make real isolation impossible without Apple's own provisioning) just can't be cloned. Rather than fake it and quietly share the original's data, I decided to exclude them outright and be upfront about it. Sandboxed apps aren't supported — accuracy mattered more to me than a longer compatibility list.
Where it landed:
7-day free trial, unlimited clones
After that, 1 clone stays free forever
$19 one-time unlocks unlimited — no subscription
Zero telemetry, zero analytics — the only network calls are license and update checks
Would love your feedback, especially on apps not yet on my https://macdupl.app/compatibility or anything odd on the native-app tier. I'll be around all day 🙏
Two Slack accounts is the honest use case, but the interesting one is what "fully isolated" means to an app that assumed it was alone. Keychain items are shared by bundle ID, and a lot of Mac apps write to fixed paths in Application Support rather than their own container. Do you rewrite the bundle ID per clone, and if so what happens to the license — does the second instance ask to be activated again?
@ark_y_k Since the bundle ID changes with each clone, Keychain isolation is essentially free because macOS already uses bundle ID to identify keys. 🙏
The tricky part is apps that write to a fixed path instead of using their own bundle ID. For Electron/Chromium apps like Slack and Claude, i use —user-data-dir, which works well. For native apps still in beta, i use a $HOME override. This is where things get a bit tricky if the app hardcodes paths. 😅
Whether the clone asks for its own license activation depends on the app, and I haven’t audited that across all of them. MacDupl’s license is per-Mac, so it’s not related to this
🔐 New: sign your instances as you
Firewalls tools identify apps by who signed them. Instances were signed generically by default — so they'd show up as "unknown publisher" and your firewall rules just wouldn't stick.
Fixed: Settings ▸ Code signing.
One button creates your own signing identity, one button removes it — nothing ever leaves your Mac.
macOS will ask for your keychain password the first time (pick "Always Allow," only asks once). Already have instances? Hit Re-sign or Re-sign All to update them — logins and settings stay exactly as they are.
Small feature, but if you're the kind of person running third party firewall app, you know why this matters 🙂
New in 0.1.19
you can now clone WhatsApp (Beta) — a second WhatsApp on the same Mac, linked as its own device with its own chats, without disturbing your main one. It's the first App Store app MacDupl can clone. Works with Electron, Chromium and Firefox-based apps, plus a growing native tier (Telegram, Zoom, Spotify, CapCut and more).