# Julia opening behavior

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-opening-behavior/72979>\
**Category:** Internals & Design\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [December 12, 2021, 2:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-opening-behavior/72979 "2021-12-12T14:44:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![leon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dc4da7/32.png) [@leon](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/leon)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2021, 2:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-opening-behavior/72979/1 "2021-12-12T14:44:24Z")

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Right now, every time I click the Julia icon in my Dock (Mac OS Monterey), it will open a new session.

Normally, when I do this to other programs, if it has already been open, it will just bring forward the already opened session. I wonder if Julia can be changed to behave just like other programs.

Many thanks for your consideration.

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**Author:** ![cormullion](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/cormullion/32/49131_2.png) [@cormullion](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cormullion)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2021, 3:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-opening-behavior/72979/2 "2021-12-12T15:37:46Z")

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Julia isn’t really an application - you can run as many Julia sessions as you like, whereas if you try to launch Safari or Mail or Terminal you’ll just see the application brought to the front (or launched if it’s not already running). I think “launching it like an application” is there for your convenience.

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**Author:** ![TheCedarPrince](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/thecedarprince/32/17323_2.png) [@TheCedarPrince](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TheCedarPrince)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2021, 5:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-opening-behavior/72979/3 "2021-12-12T17:44:39Z")

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Possibly a solution to get the behavior you want on OSX is to open Julia in a dedicated terminal via executing `julia` in the terminal shell.  
Then, rather than clicking the Julia icon, you can click the terminal’s icon and it should bring up your Julia session or terminal windows.