MacOS Startup Applications – How to Find Apps that Open on Startup but Aren’t in Users & Groups

applicationsmacosstartup

I've this annoying application popping up on startup (called ZipCloud) which seems to be installed without my knowledge (along with other app) and I wanted to get rid of it.

annoying ZipCloud pop-up

I understand I can uninstall it by dragging the app into Trash. However before doing that, I wanted to understand where the app added it-self to the startup scripts.

I've already checked in System Preferences (Users & Groups), but it's not there. I also check my /etc/rc.local. And the app it-self doesn't have any options to get rid of the startup.

What other places I can look to get rid of unwanted startup apps?

Best Answer

When a system is booted, launchd startup process launches daemons and agents in the following system-level locations (based on the property list files):

  • /System/Library/LaunchDaemons (system-wide, not writeable when SIP mode is enabled)
  • /Library/LaunchDaemons (system-wide)

When a user logs in, a per-user launchd is started and it loads the user agents from the property list files found in:

  • /System/Library/LaunchAgents (system-wide, not writeable when SIP mode is enabled)
  • /Library/LaunchAgents (system-wide)
  • ~/Library/LaunchAgents (user-level)

Source: Creating Launch Daemons and Agents.

On earlier systems, third party startup items could be also found in /etc/rc.local file and /Library/StartupItems folder, but with Mac OS X 10.4, startup items are deprecated in favour of launchd daemons.

Source: Old Systems and Technology - Startup Item.

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