I wonder if there’s some easy way to run more than 1 instance of TOR browser?
When you try to just launch 2 portable instances from their dirs you get that:
P.S. I’m aware of whonix and VMs, but that question is dedicated to nothing serious, just some quick testing of stuff from host system…
Do you need two different TOR identities? Or just two browser windows at once? If it is the latter, just open a new tab and drag it out 
If it is the former, I don’t know whether it is possible.
2 identities of course 
Well…i guess docker is one way, i just don’t like / know it that well
I tried to run Tor stable and Tor alpha side by side to see if you could have two “instances” running at the same time. It didn’t work 
Perhaps not an ideal solution but working:
Use a hardened Firefox profile (custom user.js, NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere) and configure that to run over TOR (or maybe Librewolf instead of FF)
Use your Tor browser side by side
Like this you will get two different identities.
Firefox / LibreWolf through TOR and TOR is not exactly the same 
Yeah… I know 
That’s why I wrote:
However you could still achieve some degree of anonymity/privacy, I think, if you use an adequate hardening. But perhaps not?
Not exactly, because thing about TOR’s model - you have to be identical to everyone else 
That’s why you never change settings / add plugins in TOR
Looks like docker is the only way, i’ve managed to create an image…It works, not perfectly, but works
Exactly!
I understand that. But this as close you can get if you are not going the Docker route or Whonix in VM.
I don’t know how else you could do that.
@dalto could you use your super-advanced AI to figure out some better / easier way than using docker? 
Stupid first idea: Install and run the aur and flatpak version. They should be separated.
I just tried that. No dice.
I wonder how it even detects it while being physically different files and launching portable, probably through process / class…
Next I would try to start the binary with different (FF) profiles and see if that makes a difference regarding the tor network route.
At the end of the road there’s still the nuclear option to spin up a VM.
Generally it’s very bad idea, because as TOR devs themselves say any change in profile makes it…well not really functional as TOR 
Well, that would be easy way out, and way too much of overhead, just like docker…
There should be some easier way i think, which apparently is not as obvious as one would hope 
Guess you need to use different ports.
This exact article haven’t really worked, however after that i’ve gone to the similar solution binge search (for 100th time) and come up with some mix of them:
Launch TOR 2 instance first time, change about:config
extensions.torlauncher.control_port = 9052
network.proxy.socks_port = 9152
Close it
Change torrc ports
tor-2/Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor/torrc-defaults
append to the end of exec=
, ControlPort 9052, SocksPort 9152
Now you can launch this 2nd instance simultaneously with first one!
If anyone could think of even better one, it would be cool, but it works!
You could use the flatpak. It should have separate settings from the normal version because the flatpak doesn’t have access to the other versions config.
But you’ve said it’s no dice?
I installed it and got the same error but I didn’t try changing those ports.
If you have two wholly separate versions you should be able to change the ports and have the changes persist instead of having to switch them every time.
It doesn’t matter that much in my case (i always use portable TOR instances, not system-wide, so they have isolated files)