Programmatically run at startup on Mac OS X?

Question

How do I programmatically set an application bundle on Mac OS X to run when the user logs in?

Basically, the equivalent of the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run registry key in Windows.

Answer 1

You can add the application to the user's "Login Items" (under System Preferences=>Accounts=[user]) or you can add a launchd agent to the user's ~/Library/LaunchAgents folder (see man launchd.plist). Use ~/Library/LaunchDaemons/ if your app has no user-facing UI. As others point out, launchd gives you a lot of control over when the app starts, what happens if the app quits or crashes, etc. and is most appropriate for "daemon" style apps (with our without UI).

The first option (Login Items) can be manipulated programmatically (link from Gordon).

Answer 2

A working example below.

Create a file

~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.everydaytasks.plist

With contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict>     <key>Label</key>     <string>my.everydaytasks</string>     <key>ProgramArguments</key>     <array>         <string>/Applications/EverydayTasks.app/Contents/MacOS/EverydayTasks</string>     </array>     <key>ProcessType</key>     <string>Interactive</string>     <key>RunAtLoad</key>     <true/>     <key>KeepAlive</key>     <false/> </dict> </plist> 

See the original post that helped me to make this example:

https://superuser.com/a/229792/43997

To test you need to run this in terminal

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.everydaytasks.plist 

To unload

launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.everydaytasks.plist 

See also

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/launchd.plist.5.html

The is the other way of adding your application to starup using "Login Items". See this example project on how to implement it:

https://github.com/justin/Shared-File-List-Example