Open multiple files on Mac OSX

Hello,

TouchDesigner on Mac OS X tries it’s best to only have 1 file open at a time. I say tries it’s best because there is a work around discussed here using TScript:

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9973

Currently if you have a file open in TouchDesigner it will try and close itself when you:

  • Try and start a new project
  • Try and open an existing project

This drawback makes some work flows quite difficult. I am new to TouchDesigner and it is very valuable to open up someone’s example files while I have my project open.

Thanks!

Yeah, its actually macOS trying its best to keep one instance running as part of its security. Unfortunately we haven’t found a solution for it yet but there is another way to launch new TD’s more easily than from a python script ui.viewFile(‘filepath’) inside TouchDesigner.

In the terminal you can use:

open -n /Applications/TouchDesigner099.app/

and it will launch a separate new TD. I like this approach because I can just use terminal history and open another one with 2 keystrokes.

We will keep looking for a better solution, thanks for your patience.

** EDIT: Scratched my own itch. Here’s code for an AppleScript application you can dock to let you launch a new instance + supports dropping an existing project file onto the app icon.

Still not a perfect solution, but I’ve been using that terminal command inside of a plain text file (saved with no extension) that I’ve made executable with the following command:

chmod 744 OpenNewTDInstance

Where “OpenNewTDInstance” is the name of the plain text file you saved, of course.

The advantage is that I can put it on my Dock and launch a new instance with a single click. I wish I could drop the project file that I wanted to open onto the icon— I believe this may be possible with an applescript app or droplet but I’ve yet to look into it further…

This is a great solution. I snagged the TouchDesigner.icns file from inside the TD app and added it as an icon to this AppleScript app for extra flare. :ugeek:

@why — Awesome idea!

Thanks for the solutions yall. These aren’t too bad to do :wink:

@craftandhustle Very nice!