Can the same Adobe AIR app run more than once?

Question

As the title says, is there a way to run the same Adobe AIR app more than once? I have a little widget I wrote that shows thumbnails from a couple of photo streams, and I'd like to fix it so I can look at more than one stream at a time. Thanks!

Answer 1

It seems that this is not possible. From the documentation:

Only one instance of an AIR application is started. When an already running application is invoked again, AIR dispatches a new invoke event to the running instance.

It also gives a possible workaround:

It is the responsibility of an AIR to respond to an invoke event and take the appropriate action (such as opening a new document window).

There is already a bug related to this on the bugtracker, but it is marked closed with no explicit resolution given...

Answer 2

No, it can't. AIR only allows one running instance of any app with the same ID defined in the app.xml file.

<application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/1.0">
 <id>ApplicationID</id>

To work around this you'll either have to create individually ID'd apps for each stream, or create a master app with child windows for each stream.

Answer 3

No. AIR applications can only have one instance running at a time. If you need multiple apps running, the solution is to instantiate one app, with the app view in a separate native window (one for each "app instance").

The reason it is marked closed is because it is not considered a bug, ut rather a design / implimentation choice made by the air team.

Hope that helps...

mike chambers

mesh@adobe.com

Answer 4

I have written a utility that will allow you to copy an existing AIR application and run multiple copies side by side. Each copy will have its own working directories, so the settings and stored data should be independent.

You can download the application and source code from GitHub: https://github.com/chrisdeely/AirAppDuplicator

Contact me on Twitter @chrisdeely with any questions

Answer 5

You can create a copy of the app in a different folder, then change the <id> element in the application.xml

For instance, if the first application has:

<id>ApplicationID</id>

You can alter the second instance to say:

<id>ApplicationID2</id>

Answer 6

Last time I checked, an AIR app can only run a single instance. You could open multiple windows, but your app itself would have to support that. I hope they change this soon.

Answer 7

There are good reasons for this design, although it requires application developers to follow proper OOP techniques... In OS X, you can't have multiple instances of an app open. Instead, all applications are expected to handle multiple documents properly. This is very nice from the user's perspective, even if it means more work for developers.

Answer 8

Yes it can, but the context is on different logged in user, so it may not be the answer to your problem. So the same AIR app can run two or more instances, each on different logged in user.