Perpetual "Background Items Added"

What Product Manager at Apple weaseled this obnoxious notification system through QA?

I have but a few background items, but none of them produce any notifications. As a test, I removed one and reinstalled. As expected, I received a notification, but that was it. I tend to think this is the fault of the apps, but only because there is a slight bit more evidence in that direction, nothing conclusive.

There appears to be a global freak-out about privacy, and this is probably just one of many “solutions” to come. Europeans were apparently so completely in the dark about browser cookies that we must dismiss a notification on every site we visit. I can’t fathom how someone doesn’t know that cookies are used, but the ignorance of their existence must have been on epidemic proportions all across Europe to result in the unconscionable and exhausting abundance of notifications I am forced to dismiss repeatedly.

Well, the solution here is just stupid. For me the issue started with this tiny, unknow app called Steam - after starting it I get stupid notification about "background item" every **** couple of minutes even if I close the app...

I get the notification and it's actually nice to have but it should be displayed ONCE...

As for the cookies - you would be surprised how ignorant people are.. even after couple of years with the banner they still may not have a clue... I'm actually glad there is GDPR and I can easily reject cookies for the site (though some stupid websites bury reject button quite deep, which is illegal…) but it should be a browser configuration (keep all, keep funcional, reject all)…

How is this a fix? I need my LaunchAgents to run at startup. As a developer, mySQL service needs to run when I start my mac. I can't be manually running it each time, it's annoying! Apple has been adding more bugs and breaking things that were working fine lately.

TheTimeTraveller wrote:

How is this a fix? I need my LaunchAgents to run at startup. As a developer, mySQL service needs to run when I start my mac. I can't be manually running it each time, it's annoying! Apple has been adding more bugs and breaking things that were working fine lately.

It isn’t and never was. You should start your own question for your specific problem. Anyone posting here in this thread is simply saying, “I just want to complain, try random hacks, and never get my problem fixed.”

AstroBike wrote:

Above notifications keep appearing again and again even though I uninstalled the Microsoft Edge.

How did you uninstall it? Lots of people just drag apps to the trash. Some people swear by "app zappers" or "clean up" apps. Some people diligently research the correct uninstallation procedure for each 3rd party app.

All options may be wrong.

Replying to Michael12000

Sorry, ignoramus here. How do I get added to the case?

This is, without a doubt, an Apple issue and it needs an urgent resolution.

So any place I can add my name, I would be happy to.

Phantom Steve wrote:

Replying to Michael12000

Sorry, ignoramus here. How do I get added to the case?

This is, without a doubt, an Apple issue and it needs an urgent resolution.

So any place I can add my name, I would be happy to.

You will have to write your own bug report at: https://bugreport.apple.com

You can’t “get added” to the case. Apple just keeps track of the number of duplicate reports about the same problem. In 5 or 6 years, your bug report might get closed as a duplicate.

However, I strongly encourage you to start your own question about your specific problem. The few people who do that tend to get their problem solved.

As far as I know, it's not incorrect to do that — and it does work.

But doing so sometimes leaves remnants in various folders.

Even using an uninstaller still leaves folders and files dotted around.

Ask Adobe — they provide a Cleaner Tool to rid your drive of all the little remnants — even though every one of their apps has an uninstaller.

Not really. While macOS is better than Windows in the fact that it doesn't have a centralized registry and it's plists are usually stored within the app itself, there are certain caches, application logs, startup deamons/agents, that are stored elsewhere including the following common locations:

~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Caches
~/Library/LaunchAgents

And certain (especially developer) apps, even store in these non standard locations. Such as composer storing at ~/.composer, npm storing caches at /usr/local/lib/node_modules, Code (by Microsoft) storing extensions at ~/.vscode and many more.

AstroBike wrote:

I dragged it to the Trash to uninstall as usual. Isn't it standard? What is the correct method to uninstall apps?

It is standard, but often wrong. When you are dealing with the kinds of software that run in the background and generate these notifications, it is always wrong. Many such apps have dedicated uninstallers or uninstallation procedures that you have to follow. Each app is different.

I cleaned using OnyX, but fixed nothing.

You don’t ever want to do that. Those “app zapper” tools only work on apps that were already easy to uninstall to begin with. In many cases, they will corrupt your entire system and require you to erase the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. As an added bonus, you won’t be able to do an easy restore from backup either.

(Note: there is a slightly easier way to remove those most problematic apps, but it can be dangerous. We can’t mention that procedure here in the forums. Also, you can do a selective restore of just your own user account and user files. You just can’t restore any apps, settings, or “other files”. After such an “uninstall”, you will have to reinstall all of the other 3rd party software you want to keep.)

TheTimeTraveller wrote:

While macOS is better than Windows in the fact that it doesn't have a centralized registry

macOS has many registry-style databases scattered throughout the system.

it's plists are usually stored within the app itself

plist files are usually stored in only 3 well-defined locations:

/Library/LaunchDaemons

/Library/LaunchAgents

~/Library/LaunchAgents

However, a significant new change in Ventura does now allow these plist files to be stored inside an app bundle itself. I haven’t seen many apps use this new mechanism yet, maybe MS Office.

Note that this is completely different than “Login Items” which are (for the most part) stored inside the application bundle and have been for some time. Ventura really confuses the situation by mixing all these together.

there are certain caches, application logs, startup deamons/agents, that are stored elsewhere including the following common locations:

~/Library/Application Support

~/Library/Caches

~/Library/LaunchAgents

And certain (especially developer) apps, even store in these non standard locations. Such as composer storing at ~/.composer, npm storing caches at /usr/local/lib/node_modules, Code (by Microsoft) storing extensions at ~/.vscode and many more.

Aside from daemons and agents, this is true. It has spawned a cottage industry of “app zappers” and “clean up” tools to try to remove all of these bits and pieces. As you might expect if you’ve been paying attention so far, this is useless. Files in these locations no longer have any effect on the system whatsoever and only use a tiny bit of disk space.

As an added bonus, a few years ago Apple deprecated the old “kernel extensions” and replaced them with “system extensions” that are supposedly less likely to cause system crashes. Apple bakes these new system extensions into the operating system and protects them with its SIP security system. This means that none of those “app zapper” or “clean up” tools can ever remove them. They will stay installed, and forever running totally out of control, until you erase the hard drive.

(Note: true to form, in any consumer facing documentation or pop-up alert, Apple calls both of these two different things “system extensions”.)

kildabit wrote:

1. I've tried to clear folders:

Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchAgents

2. Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchDaemons

3. Empty Bin

4. Restart

Just so people know. This is not a solution. This is only corrupting 3rd party software you had previously installed. Whether you need those 3rd party apps or not is a separate question. If all you want is for the notifications to go away. You don't ever want to use any of that software that you had downloaded and possibly paid for, then go ahead.

mightee wrote:

But what if I want to keep using the software it's notifying me about, but just not get the notifications? Won't this affect usability?

You can try uninstalling and reinstalling using the uninstaller provided by the developer. If that doesn’t work, you can ask the developer to update their software to work correctly with the new privacy requirements.

It's this and other issues (not the least of which is discontinuing support for OpenGL graphics technology) steering me away from Mac and into the dark arms of PC more and more. Since Steve Jobs left, this company is going down a slippery slope.

This worked for me when Homebrew installed a new launch agent for PostgreSQL without removing the old one. I unloaded and trashed the old one and didn't even need to restart to solve the problem. I'll add an endorsement for the LaunchControl App that makes it easy to work with launch agents; it even offered to clean up the log files from the old version when I used it to delete the old launch agent.