macOS – Stopping Apps Like Spotify from Auto Starting in High Sierra

applicationshigh sierramacosspotifystartup

I know there are Login Items under Users & Groups and /Library/LaunchAgents and /Library/LaunchDaemons under Library, System/Library and Users/FooUser/Library. And then there's right click on Dock icon -> Options -> Open at Login.

What other methods are there for apps to auto-start? The reason why I'm asking is because the Spotify App (downloaded from http://www.spotify.com) keeps starting up whenever I restart my Mac, even though I made sure there is no corresponding entry in any of the above mentioned places.

Best Answer

There are two places for LaunchAgents to be called from:

  • /Library/LaunchAgents - this launches a process at login for every user
  • ~/Library/LaunchAgents - this launches a process at login for a specific user.

The Spotify startup plist is found in the latter; the com.spotify.webhelper.plist allows you to open Spotify via the web.

Issue the command launchctl list | grep -i spotify and you should find (up to) two plists that are loaded:

$ launchctl list | grep spotify
-       0   com.spotify.client.startuphelper
9087    0   com.spotify.webhelper

To unload them, you can uncheck the option in Advanced Settings (Command,)

enter image description here

Or...

You can issue the command:

$ launchctl unload com.spotify.client.startuphelper.plist
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