How to manage startup items and login apps on Mac

The more apps you install, the more things try to launch when you log in. Some of them are useful. Many of them are not. macOS gives you a few different places to control this — and they're not all in the same spot.

Login items vs. background items: what's the difference?

Login items are apps that open a window when you log in — things like Spotify, Slack, or a clipboard manager. You see their icons in the Dock and they're straightforward to remove.

Background items (also called daemons or agents) run silently in the background with no visible window. Update checkers, menu bar utilities, and helper tools all tend to use this mechanism. They're less obvious but often have more impact on login speed.

macOS Ventura (13) brought both of these together in one place — and moved them away from the old System Preferences location.

Finding login items in macOS Ventura and later

The old path — System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login Items — is gone as of macOS 13. The new location is:

1. Open System Settings (from the Apple menu or Dock).
2. Click General in the sidebar.
3. Click Login Items & Extensions.

You'll see two sections. Open at Login lists apps that open a window. Allow in the Background lists helper tools and daemons that run silently. Both are worth reviewing — background items in particular accumulate without you noticing.

Removing a login item

To stop an app from launching at login, select it in the "Open at Login" list and click the – (minus) button. The app stays installed — it just won't open automatically anymore.

For background items, toggle the switch off. Some items can't be toggled here because they're managed by the app itself — you'll need to open the app's own preferences and look for a "Launch at login" checkbox.

Finding hidden launch agents

Some background processes don't show up in System Settings at all. They're registered as LaunchAgents — small property list files (`.plist`) that tell macOS to run a command at login or on a schedule. There are two main locations for these:

• ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ — agents installed for your user account only
• /Library/LaunchAgents/ — agents installed system-wide (usually by apps that need elevated access)

To see what's in your personal LaunchAgents folder, open Terminal and run:

# list all launch agents installed for your user
ls ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

The file names usually make it obvious which app installed them — com.dropbox.DropboxHelperAgent.plist, for example. If you recognise them and want them, leave them alone. If you see something from an app you uninstalled, it's safe to remove.

Disabling a launch agent without deleting it

Deleting a .plist file is permanent and can sometimes cause errors if the app tries to re-register it. A cleaner approach is to unload the agent — it stops running until you re-enable it or restart, and the file stays in place.

# disable a specific launch agent (replace with the actual filename)
launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.example.agent.plist

To re-enable it later:

# re-enable the same agent
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.example.agent.plist

Note that on macOS Monterey and later, launchctl unload may show a deprecation warning for some agents. The replacement command is launchctl bootout and launchctl bootstrap, but the older syntax still works in practice on most systems.

What should you actually disable?

Not every login item is a problem. If you actively use an app throughout the day, having it open at login saves you a step. The ones worth disabling are apps you only open occasionally — Zoom, Creative Cloud, Teams, or anything you downloaded once and rarely touch.

Background items are a little different. Many are necessary for apps to function correctly (Dropbox's helper, for example, needs its agent to sync in the background). A good rule: if you're not sure what it does, look up the file name before disabling it.

How login items differ from "reopen windows at login"

There's another macOS behaviour that's easy to confuse with login items: when you restart your Mac, it can reopen all the windows and apps that were open when you shut down. This is controlled separately in System Settings → General → Desktop & Dock, under the option "Close windows when quitting an application." That setting is about window state, not which apps launch — but it has a similar effect on login time.