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Is it possible to install or run multiple copies of a flatpack package (example: Teams), each with its own isolated copy?

kyrofa
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Braian
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2 Answers2

3
  1. Create a new home directory for the second flatpak app instance
sudo mkdir -p /home/flatpak2
  1. Ensure that you are the owner of the new dir
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /home/flatpak2
  1. Run the second app instance with this home dir
env HOME=/home/flatpak2 flatpak run com.microsoft.Teams
TomDotTom
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  • no longer works

    Note that the directory

    '/home/flatpak2/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share'

    is not in the search path set by the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable, so applications installed by Flatpak may not appear on your desktop until the session is restarted.

     – Joshua Robison Oct 01 '23 at 01:24
1

You can use a different flatpak HOME for each isolated copy you want, like so:

env HOME=/path/to/your/custom/flatpak/home flatpak run your-app

For example, you can have a couple of scripts to run Zoom and Flatseal isolated from the rest, like so:

$ cat zoom.sh
#!/bin/sh
env HOME=$(pwd)/custom-flatpak-home flatpak run us.zoom.Zoom

$ cat flatseal.sh
#!/bin/sh
env HOME=$(pwd)/custom-flatpak-home flatpak run com.github.tchx84.Flatseal

Since it took me a while to figure out how to go about doing this I wrote a small blog post about it, feel free to check it out: https://ivanalejandro0.com/blog/flatpak-custom-data-folder/

ivanalejandro0
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  • this no longer works. 
    Note that the directory 

'/home/flatpak2/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share'

is not in the search path set by the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable, so
applications installed by Flatpak may not appear on your desktop until the
session is restarted.
    – Joshua Robison Oct 01 '23 at 01:24