Perpetual "Background Items Added"

slps01 wrote:

I am also fairly convinced that this is a Ventura problem

Certainly.

otherwise I would not have an Allow in Background for an item entitled "Joseph Siegrist".

Joseph Siegrist was the original developer for LastPass. However, it has been sold and incorporated at least a couple of times since he would have ever shipped software signed under his own name. So your copy of LastPass must be very old.

I did try trashing a bunch of apps that showed up on the notifications whenever I started my computer or opened System Setting, and that may have solved at least a part of the problem.

And what did you lose with that?

I understand this is a problem. But I think it is a very bad idea to just go randomly deleting files. Did you have important passwords saved in LastPass? Maybe they're gone forever now.

I didn't trash LastPass, and I am still receiving notifications from several of the items that I didn't trash (Adobe, Microsoft, etc). I do have the latest version of LastPass installed, and it seems to be working. I haven't lost any passwords. So right now it's just a minor annoyance. I will wait to see whether I have lost any functionality in any of the other apps. Thanks for your advice, by the way. I wonder where the Apple support staff is hiding; they certainly were unable to deal with this.

I wonder where the Apple support staff is hiding; they certainly were unable to deal with this.

If you are looking for them here, you should consider trying a place where they actually hide out, Official Apple Support

I don’t have anything Adobe, but I do have the Microsoft auto update and licensing processes. Neither repeatedly ask. Nor do the other few items I have running.

I can only guess at the different outcomes from the same software.

Thanks for all the information. The strange thing about this is that it only appeared when I migrated my data from a MacBook Pro to a new MacBook Air. When I go back to the Pro, the notifications do not show up, just on the Air--both running Ventura 13.1. I'm not sure it's worth starting a new thread as others seem to be having a similar problem. I'll wait for the next software update.

I just rebooted after several days...and immediately had 15, repeat 15 of these notifications. Most of these do not even appear in the Log in Items in System Settings. This is such nonsense and bad programming and is appaling. I too sit and wait for a fix because no one has come up with anything on here yet to solve this.

I only experienced this problem after temporarily doing a restore from a Time Machine backup from an Intel Mac mini to a newer M1 Mac mini. Once I no longer wanted to keep the Time Machine restored copies of other users on the M1 Mac mini, I deleted those users. I continued receiving those pop-ups even after trashing the app files for the applications whose names were supposedly causing them. Only after I trashed their launch files (from the locations I specified earlier) did the pop-ups completely vanish. I have not since reinstalled those apps.

hollistonma wrote:

I will do as you've suggested and file a bug report.

No need for that.

The problem here is that this feature has absolutely nothing to do with notifications. Perhaps some of the other people reporting this problem had the same misunderstanding. And that would be why most people can't reproduce it.

This toggle switch is actually for VMWare itself. You aren't turning off a notification. You are turning off VMWare. So then, when you want to run VMWare, it seems clever enough to notice that you've turned it off, so it attempts to turn itself back on. That seems reasonable considering that you are trying to run it after all.

And the same applies to all of the other software in the list. You aren't disabling notifications, you are disabling apps. So if there is some important task that you need some of those apps to perform, and you've turned them off, better turn them back on.

In truth, these items should always be turned on. If you install 3rd party software, you installed it because you want to run it. It doesn't make sense that Apple would provide a user interface to disable the correct functionality of 3rd party software, but that's exactly what they've done. Why they've done this, I can't speculate. Well, I can, but I'm not allowed to. 😄

The reason this problem cropped up after Ventura, is that this interface simply never existed before. People who wanted to do this would have had to do it from the command line. I considered doing it in the app I wrote, but I thought it would be too dangerous. I guess Apple didn't feel the same way.

There are some rare occasions where I would consider this to be acceptable. For example, I've turned off all of Google Chrome's automatic update logic. But in this case, I have a very unusual use case. I definitely don't want any Google code running if I'm not running Chrome itself. But Chrome is unusual both for having a background task that isn't required and for not asking the user first to run it. So I feel justified in hacking back in this specific case. I wouldn't do that with any other developers. I'm happy to let Microsoft's background tasks run. Plus, if I used this Ventura interface to disable Microsoft, then Office wouldn't run at all. This is because Apple's interface is all-or-nothing. I can't just disable the auto-update feature but keep the licensing daemon. It is issues that like that lead me to recommend that people never, ever use this interface. Keep everything turned on or uninstall apps you don't want.

I think I will follow you because you seem to have the right attitude. Been an exclusive Mac user since 1985, and am continually frustrated by feature fuddle and how System Prefs seems to be the neverending story. Could you share why you are reluctant to give ways to obtain app signatures (those are the developers’ bona fixes, right) and how they can be important?. Thanks.

[Email Edited by Moderator]

It has taken me 25 years to learn to wait 6-8 months before upgrading the new MacOS, formerly OSX (until Tim 15 months ago told us to call it MacOS, like it was in the early 2000s). The reason is because of a half-dozen or so video and audio apps that do not upgrade their own software fast enough to be compatible with the latest version of Apple operating system. Be well.

@etresoft,

etresoft wrote:

hollistonma wrote:

I will do as you've suggested and file a bug report.

No need for that.

The problem here is that this feature has absolutely nothing to do with notifications. Perhaps some of the other people reporting this problem had the same misunderstanding. And that would be why most people can't reproduce it.

This toggle switch is actually for VMWare itself. You aren't turning off a notification. You are turning off VMWare. So then, when you want to run VMWare, it seems clever enough to notice that you've turned it off, so it attempts to turn itself back on. That seems reasonable considering that you are trying to run it after all.

And the same applies to all of the other software in the list. You aren't disabling notifications, you are disabling apps. So if there is some important task that you need some of those apps to perform, and you've turned them off, better turn them back on.

Thx for the clarification. I have now set VMWare back to "enable". Unfortunately the question still remains: how do I stop the notifications from occurring everytime I use VMWare Fusion? Surely it's not meant to notify me everytime it starts up that somethings been added? Or could this be happening because some files are being deleted when I close VMWare Fusion? In any case, rather annoying and wish I hadn't upgraded to Ventura yet.

hollistonma wrote:

I have now set VMWare back to "enable". Unfortunately the question still remains: how do I stop the notifications from occurring everytime I use VMWare Fusion?

If you leave it enabled, then you shouldn't get any further notifications of that fact. It sounds like you were only getting the notifications because you had disabled it. Then, when you ran VMWare fusion, it reloaded the software, which triggered the notifications.

Surely it's not meant to notify me everytime it starts up that somethings been added?

No. You should only get those notifications when some software loads a persistent background task. Normally this happens only when you install new software.

To clarify, are you saying that you have enabled VMWare and you are still getting notifications that VMWare has been installed every time you run VMWare, and you have stopped disabling VMWare? You have to be absurdly specific about these things.

This is why we always tell people to start their own questions, respond to requests for more information, and always, always avoid the "me too" posts. It might make you feel good when you click that button "Me too" button, or post a reply that sounds somewhat similar. But this thread is a good example. Start with a good question on November 2nd, add 30 confused "me too" replies, and 8 weeks later nobody is any closer to knowing anything about what is going on with your computer.

etresoft,

Thx for the quick reply.

etresoft wrote:

If you leave it enabled, then you shouldn't get any further notifications of that fact. It sounds like you were only getting the notifications because you had disabled it. Then, when you ran VMWare fusion, it reloaded the software, which triggered the notifications.

To be clear, I receive the notifications regardless of whether VMWare is enabled or disabled. I understand now why I receive them if I disable VMWare.

However even when enabled, I receive the notification and VMWare will show up on the list of apps as I previously showed. Once I shut down VMWare, VMWare disappears from the "Allow in the Background" list (again, I have not disabled it). Once I use VMWare again, I receive the notification and VMWare will show up on the list of apps in "Allow in the Background" list.

are you saying that you have enabled VMWare and you are still getting notifications that VMWare has been installed every time you run VMWare, and you have stopped disabling VMWare?

Yes.

hollistonma wrote:

However even when enabled, I receive the notification and VMWare will show up on the list of apps as I previously showed. Once I shut down VMWare, VMWare disappears from the "Allow in the Background" list (again, I have not disabled it). Once I use VMWare again, I receive the notification and VMWare will show up on the list of apps in "Allow in the Background" list.

Well that's very interesting. That means that VMWare simply isn't compatible with Ventura. You wouldn't have noticed this kind of behaviour before Ventura. You would think that VMWare would have noticed since Ventura was first released to developers six months ago.

Same here. It's ridiculous.

Half of the items on my list are unknown to me — it would help if there was some info — like which software relies on which background item.

I decided to turn some off — and the problem got worse !!!

Phantom Steve wrote:

Same here. It's ridiculous.

Half of the items on my list are unknown to me — it would help if there was some info — like which software relies on which background item.

I decided to turn some off — and the problem got worse !!!

Why would you turn them off? You installed software to do some function for you, and that software does some of that function in the background.

They aren’t doing anything you didn’t ask them to do on your behalf. It would be great if when you installed a piece of software, it told you exactly what it was installing and what it would be doing, but they don’t the only difference between any previous OS and Ventura is Apple is showing you what things are running in the background. All of those apps were running the background processes prior to Ventura, it’s just that nobody told you they were.