Where To Find Apps That Launch Automatically On a Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today I'm going to show you where to find apps that automatically launch when you startup your Mac or log into your account. 

MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.

So if you've ever wondered why some apps start automatically when you boot your Mac or log into a user account well there are six different places on your Mac where there are lists of apps that will automatically startup. So the first place to look is in System Preferences. If you go to Users & Groups and select your current user account, then click on the Login Items, and here you're going to see a list of Login Items. These are apps that will automatically launch once you've logged into this User Account. So, for instance here I have not a full app but part of an app that controls my screen resolution for better recording in these tutorials. You can see here it's set to Automatically Launch when I login to this user account. There's also a checkbox here as to whether or not it's hidden when the app launches. So checked means it's hidden. It launches quietly in the background. Unchecked means it actually will come to the front so I can see it. Now if I move my cursor over this and wait you could see a path will appear. This shows me where the app is. So if you don't recognize what it is by its name perhaps its location will tell you, like perhaps it's inside of a folder for an app. So the location gives you a hint as to where it is. You can also Control Click on it and choose Show in Finder and that will bring up that exact file here.

Now Users & Groups is the only place where you should manually add anything that you want to automatically launch when you login. So, for instance, if I wanted to have the Reminders app launch automatically I can click the Plus button here, go to my Applications Folder, and add Reminders to this list. This means Reminders should automatically launch right after I log into this account. Now you can see this list change in some cases. Let me launch a small third party app that allows me to insert sample text when I'm doing tutorials. So here if I go to Preferences in this app there is a preference for Start at Login. If I check that I can see it's going to add that to this list right here. So I could actually go in here and remove it. But the proper place to remove it should be within the app just in case the app is also doing something else to facilitate the launching at login. So you uncheck it there and you could see it gets removed. So when at all possible use the native functionality inside the app to add or remove items to this. Don't do it manually. 

Now what if a regular apps , something like Safari, Mail, Reminders, Keynote they launch when you reboot your Mac. I hear a lot of people asking about this and they don't find that app listed at all in Login Items. What's happening there is your Mac is set to automatically relaunch the apps you were using if you do a Restart. Notice if I go to Restart here. It actually asks me, Reopen windows when logging back in. So if I have that checked it's going to reopen all of the windows for the apps I was currently using. So if I have those apps open and I do a Restart with this checked then all those apps will reopen. If you don't want that to happen make sure this is unchecked. That functionality has nothing to do with Login Items or anything else I'm going to show. 

Now also note another way to add things here or remove them is in the Dock. If you go down to the Dock here and say you want to add Calendar to Login Items I don't even need to go to System Preferences. If I Control Click on Calendar and go to Options there's Open At Login. If I check that then you could see Calendar is added to this list. It takes a few seconds to appear. I can also Remove it the same way. So that all makes sense except that most of us have apps that automatically launch when you startup your Mac or when you log into an account and they are not in Login Items. Well, there are actually five locations where these items are listed. 

So let's create a new Finder window. I'm going to use the Go menu here and hold down the Option key to go to the Library. Then under here I'm going to look for a folder called Launchagents. I'm going to go in there. So this gives me a different list than I'll see in Login Items. What's here is a list of instructions of what should be launched when you log into this particular User Account. Here I can see one item is from Adobe. I have Adobe Creative Cloud installed so that kind of makes sense. This is a P list file. So it's not the actual app itself. It is a text file. If I Control Click on it and choose Open With I can choose to open it with TextEdit. Here is what I see. It's this list that you can read that shows you exactly what's going to be launched. If I look for a path I could find here in two different places the path to what is being launched. You could see it here and here. It also gives instructions on exactly what is supposed to happen. So this file here isn't the actual app itself. It's basically a list of instructions. So this is the only other place in your User Account where you're going to see things. The LaunchAgent folder in your user Library is specific to this one user account. It doesn't effect other user accounts on this machine. 

So let's look at another location. I'm going to use Shift Command G which is the Go, Go To Folder command. I'm going to go to slash Library slash LaunchAgents. Now this may seem like I'm going to the same exact location. But this LaunchAgent's folder is in my Home folder for this user account. Whereas this one is at the System Level. So when I go here there are a lot more things. What's the difference between this folder and the one in my Home folder? This folder is universal for the entire Mac. So things listed here won't just launch for that one user account, it will launch for any user account on that Mac. I'll see various different things listed here. So I'll find some Adobe things with Creative Cloud. I'll find some Goggle things that are related to Chrome. I'll find something related to Microsoft here. Something with my Logitech Webcams. All sorts of different things. Each one of these contains a set of instructions of what to do. So I'll open this with TextEdit. I'm just going to drag and drop it into the Dock to see it in TextEdit. You can see here this is what it's going to launch. 

There's actually a third LaunchAgent place and that's if we go to the System Folder and the Library folder under that. We'll go into there. Now this is in the System Folder which is Read Only. So third party apps can't use this. This is only used by parts of the system. So everything you'll find in System Library LaunchAgents is part of macOS. So these are all things that macOS wants to run in the background once it launches. Most of these are minor little things. Some of them just launch and are done. Others are running in the background all the time monitoring and allowing you to use the various pieces of hardware and software and parts of the operating system. You don't really need to worry about anything in your System Folder because it's all locked down by macOS.

Now there are actually two other locations where you could also find things but they are not LaunchAgents. They are called Daemons. So if you go to System Library instead of LaunchAgents we look for LaunchDaemons, and it's daemons spelled dae, then these are some other things that get launched. Just like the LaunchAgents they are actually p list, instructions of what to launch. The difference between LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons are agents act on the User Account. So either the specific user account or o user accounts, whichever one you're logged into. Daemons work at the System level. They are actually running before you even ever log into an account. In this case the things in System Library LaunchDaemons are parts of the operating system. Basically the operating system that's running while you're using your Mac. But you could also go to the regular Library Folder LaunchDaemons. This is stuff outside of the system. Here you'll find LaunchDaemons from third party apps. So these are things that will run in any user account. So here, for instance, is my online backup software. It automatically launches when I start running my Mac. More stuff from Adobe and Goggle and Microsoft.

Now it's important to realize that for all the LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons folders you should try to not edit those manually. If something is running that you don't want to run you should launch that app and go into the preferences for that app. Look for an option to turn it off. If there's no option to turn that off it maybe that that app simply can't operate without that LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon app running in the background at all times. You want to contact Support for that app if it's an app that you want to continue to use. Otherwise to get rid of it you would simply uninstall that app following the uninstall instructions from that app developer. That will not only uninstall the app itself but it would get rid of any LaunchAgents or LaunchDaemons. If you've already uninstalled the app in a way you're not supposed to and find that there's still a LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon there then you may want to delete it manually although I would check with Support for that app first. 

Now another reason you may find a LaunchDaemon or LaunchAgent there that you don't recognize is because perhaps you messed up, installed something you shouldn't have from a site you shouldn't have trusted and now you've got malware. Malware will commonly put things in LaunchAgents or LaunchDaemons so it's automatically running when you restart your Mac. In that case do a search for what you find there to see what other people do to get rid of that. It may not be as easy as simply removing the LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon. It may be installed deeper than that and you may need to seek professional help to actually remove the malware from your Mac. Keep in mind just because you don't recognize something it doesn't mean it shouldn't be there. Always look inside the p list file using TextEdit to find out what it's actually running and what folder it's inside. That may give you a clue. Copy the name of the p list file into a Search online. You may get clues as to what the app is for. It may surprise you to find that something you don't recognize at all is actually a background process for an app that you use all the time. Certainly you don't want to mess with. 

So I hope this gives you some insight into how some apps automatically launch when you boot your Mac or log into a user account. Thanks for watching.