macOS “ChatGPT.app” can be run just for one user at the same time

ChatGPT Bugs
1

I am using multiple macOS profiles and I’m switching between them quite often. I can use the ChatGPT macOS app just on one of them at the same time:
" You can’t open the application “ChatGPT.app” because someone else is using it.
Ask the other user to quit the application, and then try again."

Why is there such limitation?

mac: Apple M1 Max
system: macOS 14.5 (23F79)
chatGPT.app version: 1.2024.170 (1719338033)

13 Likes
2

Same issue here! Any news on this, OpenAI team? Thanks, G.

3

I’m wondering about this as well. Seems like a strange limitation, especially since you can still login with multiple users on a web browser.

Any official word? :confused:

4

I ran into the same issue. Looks like the Obsidian team ran into the same issue and identified a fix:

Seems to be caused by the misleadingly named LSMultipleInstancesProhibited which sounds like it would make the app single instance, but actually prohibits it from running under multiple users.

source: forum.obsidian.md/t/because-someone-else-is-using-it/11095/4

Seems simple enough if it’s the same issue, which it likely is. Would be great if someone from the OpenAI dev team could look into this.

PS: Not allowed to make the above link into a clickable hyperlink because my user is new, I suppose.

5

Still same issue and we’re in November…

6

+1. This is the biggest blocker to me subscribing!

7

Yeah, I’m trying to integrate with Apple Intelligence as I have two profiles on my Mac, one for personal use, one for business. But I’m unable to enable the chatgpt extension on the second profile. Just keeps returning an error message with no recourse or instructions.

2 Likes
8

I am encountering the same issue. Would hugely appreciate it if this is fixed.

9

Same here! Very annoying that when switching between local account you get the ‘You can’t open the application “ChatGPT” because someone else is using it’-message and need to quit it in the other account first.

10

This is rough and means that I just don’t use the ChatGPT app half the time. It would be amazing if this was fixed, such a weird thing for an app to do!

11

This is enough of a problem for me that I may cancel my subscription and switch to Claude.

I have different user accounts on my mac for different activities, such as coding and making (electronics and 3D printing). I leverage ChatGPT heavily for both of these, and this is quite an annoyance.

I’ve even tried installing separate instances of ChatGPT under the individual user’s “Applications” directories, to no avail (-/Applications).