Where to find app which opens on startup, but it's not in Users & Groups?
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.
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?
Solution 1:
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.