Many Programs are now running in the Background

[flowrider]

With Golden Gate Beta 1, it seems that many programs are running in the background after they are launched, used, and then quit.

Photoshop, Chrome, Gmail helper to name a few.

Edit - Trying to restart to clear this issue, my M2 Ultra Mac Pro, did something I have not experienced in a long time, it froze

Lou

 

[southerndoc]

Right click the dock icon and you can turn off run in background.

 

[bogdanw]

With Golden Gate Beta 1, it seems that many programs are running in the background after they are launched, used, and then quit.

In my opinion, it’s not real, it’s just a bug in displaying the message.
Open one of those apps, open Activity Monitor and search for the app, quit the app the normal way. It should disappear from Activity monitor, regardless of the ‘Running in the background” message.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

They have always been running in the background. GG just exposes that now.

 

[flowrider]

^^^^Don't think so - I believe it to be a bug.

Lou

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Put it in Feedback Assistant.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

It's not a bug. It's actually a new feature implemented in Golden Gate, where it can now show you, in the dock, which apps are running background processes. Apps have always been running background processes. Not all, but many. They keep helpers in the background, for example (Chrome being a prime culprit), even after you quit them. The new GG feature makes that visible in the dock.

 

[bogdanw]

Video proof of the bug

 

[galad]

How is that a bug? If that app runs a daemon in the background, even an on demand on, it's running in the background.

Developers should just adding crap that runs in the background for no benefit at all (looking at you, Google and Adobe).

 

[Snørrbjørg]

Remove all the Keystone crap deamon files from the drive and Goggles apps will stopp the hogging.

 

[Nermal]

Developers should just adding crap that runs in the background for no benefit at all (looking at you, Google and Adobe).

Apple's guilty of it too. My MacBook's "apps using significant energy" menu sometimes has Photos listed, even though I don't even use Photos on that machine.

 

[bogdanw]

How is that a bug? If that app runs a daemon in the background, even an on demand on, it's running in the background.

Developers should just adding crap that runs in the background for no benefit at all (looking at you, Google and Adobe).

The app does not have any daemon running in the background. macOS 27 is probably confused because the app includes the Sparkle framework.

Remove all the Keystone crap deamon files from the drive and Goggles apps will stopp the hogging.

That appears separately from Chrome, as GoogleUpdater.



Can someone show proof that Google Chrome is running in the background after quitting it?

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Developers should just adding crap that runs in the background for no benefit at all

There can be many benefits from running processes in the background. Operating systems are in fact designed to do this - for a reaon - and have been doing it ever since multitasking became a thing back in the 1980s.

An OS (and the apps running on it) are more than just user-facing UIs.

Video proof of the bug

This isn't a bug. An app can spawn processes that have completely different names than the main process. Most stuff on macOS has a parent process called launchd, yet the child processes have entirely different names (for example: launchd spawns 1password).

macOS sees the entire process tree and determines what launched what. And that's pretty much what is exposed now in the UI (like the dock) in GG.

On a side note - @bogdanw - your signature is at least partly outdated now with the release of Homebrew 6.0.

 

[bogdanw]

This isn't a bug. An app can spawn processes that have completely different names than the main process. Most stuff on macOS has a parent process called launchd, yet the child processes have entirely different names (for example: launchd spawns 1password).

But that app doesn't.

I reinstalled Chrome, now the "Stop Running in the Background" option is no longer present. Chrome does not run in the background and it doesn't spawn processes that remain active after quitting the app. Even GoogleUpdate closes.

If someone has proof to the contrary, I would very much like to see it.

 

[novagamer]

There can be many benefits from running processes in the background. Operating systems are in fact designed to do this - for a reaon - and have been doing it ever since multitasking became a thing back in the 1980s.

An OS (and the apps running on it) are more than just user-facing UIs.



This isn't a bug. An app can spawn processes that have completely different names than the main process. Most stuff on macOS has a parent process called launchd, yet the child processes have entirely different names (for example: launchd spawns 1password).

macOS sees the entire process tree and determines what launched what. And that's pretty much what is exposed now in the UI (like the dock) in GG.

On a side note - @bogdanw - your signature is at least partly outdated now with the release of Homebrew 6.0.

The problem isn't the concept, it's that the vast majority of background processes wind up being telemetry about every damn thing you're doing and a privacy nightmare. It's good Apple is exposing this because it will make people look into what's going on and draw more attention to this.

Even things that are simple like DAW plugins or updaters wind up installing things that run constantly often - and they're basically just skimming your system for information about you. It's gross and sad that much (not all, but much) of this great technology has been weaponized against users instead of helping them.

I called out one of the developers for this in public a couple years ago and got threatened with a lawsuit because I caught them running something that once authorized kept scanning my drive and they told me I reverse engineered their code. Idiots.

Daemons for things like file sharing or backups are obvious exceptions and do need to exist, but there's no reason for most software to poll the internet or send out anything about you constantly. More people should recognize this and push back.

Good on Apple for surfacing it, even if in some cases it is benign.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

But that app doesn't.

How do you know? Have you inspected every running process on your machine and looked at which parent process started them?

Also, isn't this an Intel app? Could Rosetta be the culprit?

I don't want to rule out that macOS is misreporting something on this particular app, but it doesn't sound very plausible, given that it seems to work fine with other apps.

The problem isn't the concept, it's that the vast majority of background processes wind up being telemetry about every damn thing you're doing and a privacy nightmare.

Sure, and I agree in general, but I don't agree with "it's the vast majority" (it's probably the opposite).

It's good Apple is exposing this

Apple isn't exposing what the background processes do, at least not in this UI context. It just shows you that background processes are running - which is an absolutely normal thing.

If you wanted to see if an app is sending "telemetry data", you'd have to inspect the process with Activity Viewer (or ps and lsof on the CLI) and then decrypt the packet payload and inspect the payload's content. Which, you probably won't be able to do unless you do a man in the middle attack against the HTTPS traffic.

 

[novagamer]

If you wanted to see if an app is sending "telemetry data", you'd have to inspect the process with Activity Viewer (or ps and lsof on the CLI) and then decrypt the packet payload and inspect the payload's content. Which, you probably won't be able to do unless you do a man in the middle attack against the HTTPS traffic.

Yeah, I have done this. Also just using normal stuff like littlesnitch will show a lot of ‘where are things going when i do x’ which reveals some things without having to do the fancy interception. I have done both, though.

I understand Apple isn’t exposing what - my point is the larger ‘this has become normalized and shouldn’t be’ aspect, which is true, is being exposed - and that is good. The amount of hooks the Gemini app installs on macOS is egregious, without asking, as one recent example.

People should be aware of what their devices are doing, regardless of the intent. If there is a license check that fires every second (which was the case with a flagship audio interface, for example), that’s not only something worth knowing, it’s a bad development practice to not have timeouts and sensible intervals. I’m just using this as an example, I reported this and the developer corrected the stupid code but it shouldn’t have left the company like that and got caught because i was paying attention to what new programs were doing on my machine.

It’s sort of like how the modern web uses javascript to obfuscate all kinds of things. You can’t get rid of data brokers (until society decides to) but you can limit the amount of data they get, to some degree, and for the people who care to do the work to do that even if it’s just to run simple adblockers (and crucially, in-app ad blockers like the new filtr), it is worthwhile to pay attention.

The tens of thousands of blocks I have every single week on my edge device say that it actually is the vast majority of network requests, I’m sorry to say. The tech industry is a mess and much like the App Store nutrition labels (which I was tangentially involved with), this is a step in a direction that doesn’t solve anything but brings some awareness to people who do want to look further into it and might not have otherwise.

On iOS, it’s illuminating how many things actually work just fine if you have background app refresh off. It’s upward of 95% of apps that I use, even messengers since push notifications can still get through. Also saves on battery. On a mac turning that off globally would be nuts, of course.

Things running in the background are fine, but knowing what is …is also good. It’s win-win, but it might cause some more news stories and scrutiny when (slightly) bad actors take liberties.

 

[bogdanw]

How do you know? Have you inspected every running process on your machine and looked at which parent process started them?

I've inspected the app for binaries and used Sloth.

Also, isn't this an Intel app? Could Rosetta be the culprit?

Why would Rosetta be the culprit? It's not running even when the app is running.

I don't want to rule out that macOS is misreporting something on this particular app, but it doesn't sound very plausible, given that it seems to work fine with other apps.

See Chrome above https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nning-in-the-background.2483775/post-34633669

 

[Comfortably Numb]

@novagamer As I said, I agree in principle, but I think you are blowing it way out of proportion. There is just no credible data to back up "the vast majority of background processes" do this. It's overly alarmist. And the "new" Apple feature isn't changing anything about it. Let alone that all of this has been visible before GG.

I can't wait for all the less tech-savy people starting to complain that their system isn't working as expected and then when you dig deeper, it turns out they kept killing those evil background processes that Apple is now shoving in their faces. Apple is probably confusing more people with this than actually helping.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Why would Rosetta be the culprit? It's not running even when the app is running.

Just a hunch. I thought I remembered Activity Viewer in your videos showing the app as an Intel app, so I assumed it's an Apple Silicon machine using Rosetta to run that app.

 

[novagamer]

@novagamer As I said, I agree in principle, but I think you are blowing it way out of proportion. There is just no credible data to back up "the vast majority of background processes" do this. It's overly alarmist. And the "new" Apple feature isn't changing anything about it. Let alone that all of this has been visible before GG.

I can't wait for all the less tech-savy people starting to complain that their system isn't working as expected and then when you dig deeper, it turns out they kept killing those evil background processes that Apple is now shoving in their faces. Apple is probably confusing more people with this than actually helping.

Yeah, I see that point of view and have navigated it as well in corporate life where I pushed on a VP to change course on telemetry settings and disclosures and ultimately got agreement after initial responses exactly like yours which are not unfounded.

I've worked managing research teams and some other security adjacent stuff that I still have NDAs for... I'm pretty comfortable with what I said being fairly accurate - note I said network traffic in my follow-up, not every background process. There are of course hundreds on modern macOS, but many of the "helpers" that install with apps and especially app suites aren't really necessary, especially when the app itself is not active, and a lot of them do persist even with app closure. Adobe does this, Google does this, dozens of audio software packages do this, etc. But things like dropbox, yeah, you're going to want that thing running constantly.

An explainer in the "Tips" popup on a new install when macOS 27 hits GM might be a good compromise at minimum, users should be aware of this new behavior, we absolutely are aligned on that 🙂.

But you're right that the non tech-savvy users will have reactions which I view as a good thing and you view as a bad thing which is just a difference of experience and point of view, I think a good analogue is how many people do not understand wired memory vs. memory used on macOS, we still get threads about that here all the time because if you come from windows or just don't know what you're looking at you don't realize that cached data that isn't paged out until it needs to be is actually a really useful design principle for an OS to have.

The memory pressure gauge is a great example of something that is opaque to most mac users, and even power users. Apple could do better in those areas with some slight onboarding materials or even just a little (i) that you could click for an explainer.