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3 Applications opening at boot, no login items...

M

MacProFreak

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 14, 2013
124
8
I need help.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, every time I boot up / restart, System Settings in the battery pane, Mail and Firefox are being launched.

There are no login items in the users pane.
PRAM reset didn't do anything
Running first aid on all disks didn't do anything (repair disk permissions doesn't exist anymore)

Something somewhere is calling for these applications to start, and I can't figure out how to stop this.

The system settings opens in the battery pane and the window moves up above the top edge of the screen too... very strange.

Is there a file somewhere that is maybe telling these 3 to start up at boot?
 
MacProFreak said:
I need help.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, every time I boot up / restart, System Settings in the battery pane, Mail and Firefox are being launched.

There are no login items in the users pane.
PRAM reset didn't do anything
Running first aid on all disks didn't do anything (repair disk permissions doesn't exist anymore)

Something somewhere is calling for these applications to start, and I can't figure out how to stop this.

The system settings opens in the battery pane and the window moves up above the top edge of the screen too... very strange.

Is there a file somewhere that is maybe telling these 3 to start up at boot?
Click to expand...
I have the same problem with Chrome, and haven't been able to figure out why/how it's loading on boot.
 
There must be some Mac OSX expert here that knows the guts of this system.... What puzzles me is WHY WHY WHY it started doing this all of a sudden. It's very annoying. I bet there is some .plist somewhere that is causing this, I just don't know where to look for it or what search arguments to use.
 
MacProFreak said:
Yes, it's unchecked. As always.... so I have no idea what's going on.
Click to expand...
When you hover the cursor over the app (like you would if you wanted to remove from the dock etc.) and tap on options, make sure the 'open at login' is not checked. That may not be your problem but, never hurts to make sure an accidental tick didn't get made.
 
It might sound a strange thing to say (and I don't even know if it exists any more) but you don't have Bitdefender for Mac installed do you?
I ask because this was a problem a number of years ago and it was caused by Bitdefender's anti-phishing arrangement.
Not sure how though, sadly.
 
You could try rebooting into Safe Mode (which, apparently, wipes any memory of previously opened windows that the OS thinks you might want re-opened after a reboot), then rebooting again normally.
 
The "Open at login" option is unchecked on all 3 apps. I don't have and never had bitdefender installed. I went Command-R and re-installed BigSur and it didn't solve the problem. I'll try booting in safe mode now.
 
When booting up in safe mode, none of the 3 apps loaded up. When I opened up system settings it went straight to the battery pane. Very strange. When I rebooted normally, all 3 apps opened up again at boot.

If I do a clean install, I'd need to restore data from a time machine backup - this would probably also restore the problem. As mentioned, there must be a .plist that is causing this. The question is why this happened and where is this file...
 
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MacProFreak said:
When booting up in safe mode, none of the 3 apps loaded up. When I opened up system settings it went straight to the battery pane. Very strange. When I rebooted normally, all 3 apps opened up again at boot.

If I do a clean install, I'd need to restore data from a time machine backup - this would probably also restore the problem. As mentioned, there must be a .plist that is causing this. The question is why this happened and where is this file...
Click to expand...
Check the following folders and see if there is anything there related to the three apps.

/Library/StartupItems and /System/Library/StartupItems
 
They are all empty
I also checked LaunchDaemons but those folders have way too many files, IDK which one to look for.
 
try a test admin account; does it happen there as well? (just a way to determine if the problem is global, or solely related to your account). you could also try moving firefox to the trash (the app), see how that affects the issue.
 
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Login as a different user doesn't launch the apps, so it's not global. But.... when opening system settings under the new user, it also goes to the battery pane right away. I haven't tried to uninstall firefox yet.
 
MacProFreak said:
They are all empty
I also checked LaunchDaemons but those folders have way too many files, IDK which one to look for.
Click to expand...
I believe that /System is not writeable, so anything in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons has to be correct as it's stock MacOS. Certainly in my system the files there all have the same date/time which would imply they've never changed due to user activity.

/Library/LaunchDaemons is where the user writeable stuff goes. I only have two, and they relate to my MS Office installation. LaunchAgents only has one file, and that is also part of MS Office. I think these directories are system wide, so would affect any logged-in user.

My ~/Library/LaunchAgents is empty.

Check ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist file. If it exists, delete it then reboot.

(~ is your home directory)
 
adrianlondon said:
Check ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist file.
Click to expand...

I have this file and its contents are

bplist00—\SessionItems“ZController_CustomListItems†;

I've removed the file but it didn't solve the problem. And now I get a prompt asking me to enter a password for iMessage - this is becoming frustrating...
 
important not to delete plists, better to move them to the desktop, reboot, and replace them if other problems occur.

you say this only happens in your account? try deleting (ha!) the "caches" folder in your USER library, then reboot. see if that fixes anything.
 
Okay guys, I got so frustrated with this that I ended up creating a new user account that boots clean without launching any apps. I've transferred most of the stuff I need. But I am having an issue with apple mail. After manually transferring the following folders, upon starting mail it still thinks it's a brand new install and it asks for me to setup email accounts. Am I missing any files or folders that need to be copied to the new user?

I've copied:
~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
~/Library/Keychains

Thanks
 
fisherking said:
try deleting (ha!) the "caches" folder in your USER library, then reboot. see if that fixes anything.
Click to expand...
I still have the old account so I'll try this.
Edit: Didn't work.

Also, when login into the new fresh user account, spotlight was asking for the keychain password every time. I fixed this by changing the new user account password to the same as the old user.

Still having the issue with mail app though...
 
Last edited:
Just to finish this thread, I've ended up transferring everything to a new user account and deleted the old account. Problem solved, no apps are opening at boot anymore. Transferring the emails manually was a PITA though.
 
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MacProFreak said:
Just to finish this thread, I've ended up transferring everything to a new user account and deleted the old account. Problem solved, no apps are opening at boot anymore. Transferring the emails manually was a PITA though.
Click to expand...
Glad you were able to stop it from happening with a new account. I would have liked to know what the cause was. I don't like cliff-hangers. :p
 
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