MacOS – Automatically Load LaunchDaemon

launchdmacosplist

I wrote a little script to automatically update my Network Location based on a couple of conditions, and have coupled that with a launchd plist to have it run every couple of minutes.

However, I've noticed that my launchd plist doesn't seem to get loaded when my computer reboots. My plist is in ~/Library/LaunchDaemons and is fairly simple:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.davedelong.location-updater</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/path/to/my/location_updater.rb</string>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>180</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

My LaunchDaemons folder has the expected 700 permissions, and running launchctl load with my plist makes things work just fine. It's just that when I reboot, it's not getting loaded.

I was under the impression that everything in ~/Library/LaunchDaemons and ~/Library/LaunchAgents got loaded automatically by launchd. Is this not the case? If this is the case (and I think it is), then why isn't my plist getting loaded?

Best Answer

~/Library/LaunchDaemons isn't a valid location for either launch agents or launch daemons. You are misunderstanding the terminology. LaunchDaemons are system-wide processes, while LaunchAgents are run per-user. From the launchd man page:

~/Library/LaunchAgents         Per-user agents provided by the user.
/Library/LaunchAgents          Per-user agents provided by the administrator.
/Library/LaunchDaemons         System-wide daemons provided by the administrator.
/System/Library/LaunchAgents   Per-user agents provided by Mac OS X.
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons  System-wide daemons provided by Mac OS X.

Move your plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents, and it should just work.

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