How To Stop Apps From Launching Automatically On Mac

If you are a Mac user and have to quit an app that launches automatically whenever you restart the machine, the situation can quickly become worrisome for you.You’d obviously want a permanent solution to avoid getting into the situation over and over again. Well, managing your login items can help you get rid of the issue once and for all. So, read on to find out how you can do that.

Jump To Section

• Managing Login Items From System Preferences
• A Word Of Caution
• An Important Note

Managing Login Items From System Preferences

As most of the Settings for your Mac are located in the System Preferences, same is the case with these Login items. Follow these steps to manage your login items as you want.

1. Go to System Preferences through Apple Menu (You can also click System Preferences in dock or search it using Spotlight)
2. In System Preferences click Users And Groups. (If your OSX is older then this option may be labeled as Accounts)
3. In this new window you will see your Account in the list appearing on left side, Select it
4. Now click the tab labeled Login Items that you can see towards the right of this window
5. There could be several things set up to open when you login and all of these will be needed by individual programs for working properly. For instance, Cloak would not be able to toggle the VPN On automatically if it were not launched at the time of the reboot and, therefore, needs that permission. On the contrary, you may not be using Google Drive but it starts syncing unnecessarily after you reboot.
6. Now for stopping the app (like Google Drive) from launching automatically, you will just have to select it and then click on minus sign that you can see at the end of the list.
7. Once you are done, you won’t see the app launching again unless you do it manually by going to My Applications.

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If the login items contain anything that isn’t important or you don’t want to run all the time then disabling them using the above mentioned procedure can really come in handy.

A Word Of Caution

It is important to mention here that if you see something unrecognizable in the list of Login Items then you should better leave it there and avoid getting into any kind of further trouble. It is, however, possible to get some details about the login items by pointing on them and right-clicking the items and then selecting “Show in Folder”.

Doing so will launch the Finder window to open the location of that item. This will certainly give you some important clues about their function.Besides, you can always perform a few web searches with the name of certain login items to find out which applications may be using them and what they are all about.

An Important Note

One final thing worth mentioning here is that if some app from the list keeps opening even after you have removed it several times, you should make sure that you are not letting the apps to automatically re-launch themselves every time your Mac restarts. When you “Shut Down” or “Restart” your mac from Apple menu, you can see a checkbox on warning dialog that should always be unchecked.

Checking that box will mean that the programs that you were running will launch automatically as soon as your system starts again. For this they don’t have to be the part of login items.