How to add a sandboxed app to the login items

Question

I want my app to auto start if the user select the option. The methods I have been using is not allowed anymore in sandboxed apps.

I know I have to create a helper to achieve that? Is there a simple tutorial with sample code to active that?

I found this tutorial, but it does not work for me: http://www.delitestudio.com/2011/10/25/start-dockless-apps-at-login-with-app-sandbox-enabled/

It is a pretty standard thing to do, I don't understand why there is no example project available.

UPDATE:

I uploaded a sample project: http://ge.tt/6DntY4K/v/0?c

Answer 1

You should succeed by using this (disclaimer: my) tutorial, sample project included.

Update: I've now tested the sample project you've uploaded: It works just fine with me, without any modifications, and launch at login succeeds. The only trick is that the AutoStart.app file has to be placed in the /Applications or ~/Applications folder to be launched successfully at login. This is necessary regardless of whether the app is sandboxed or not. However, there's no official documentation on this, I'm afraid.

Answer 2

I've just re-done about 100 trial on Tim's tutorial. Finally I made it work. Although I swear it worked when I first time tried it. In my situation is when I switch "Launch at login" to On, I can only see the helper app launched for just one second right after login. Then it was gone. Manually start the app, I saw the switch was turned off.

Here was what I found:

1. my bundle identifier was already in the list of NSArray *running = [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] runningApplications]
2. the status of the NSRunningApplication *app (bundle name equal to my app) is: [app isActive] == NO, [app isHidden] == NO, [app isTerminated] = NO

So I made some modification to the code like:

BOOL alreadyRunning = NO; BOOL isActive = NO; // my modification NSArray *running = [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] runningApplications]; for (NSRunningApplication *app in running) {      if ([[app bundleIdentifier] isEqualToString:@"com.mybundleidentifier"]) {         alreadyRunning = YES;         isActive = [app isActive]; // my modification     } }  if (!alreadyRunning || !isActive) { // my modification   ....