Perpetual "Background Items Added"

I tried this but it didn't fix the problem for me. Two programs: GoToMeeting and Spotify continue to pop up. I deleted the GoToMeeting program so it shouldn't continue to show up. This is super annoying! I turned off Spotify updates yet this continues to pop up.

Can you suggest other approaches?

Deleting an app that installs a background process may not remove the background process. Apps can now ebbed them in the app bundle, but very few have done that.

Any app that requires an installer must be uninstalled using the developer’s uninstaller app or instructions.

I had the same problem with just one application and tried all the other suggestions that didn't work. I found out the application needed updating to match the system update. Once I did the update, the messages have stopped. Not sure that's the problem with all the messages...but it worked for NCH software.

This workaround worked for me, thanks Jeff Chapman

I removed related application files from below location

~/Library/LaunchAgents

Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchAgents

and did restart.

I left application files under Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchDaemons hopefully it is not triggering background notification in my case.

Got things cleared up on my machine. Followed some directions here and elsewhere. Maybe this will help.

My situation:

Macbook Air M2.

Logitech software installed for mouse (logioptions+), logitech presentation software, and G hub. Removed all, still had issue.

Used CleanMyMac to also clear up agents (using CleanMyMac optimization).

Still causing issues.

Everything Logitech uninstalled (or so I thought!). Still Background items were listed in Settings for Logitech and Logi+.

So, used Finder to my user folder, while *still* in my user folder, hold Command, Shift, and period to show hidden files. You'll see a hidden Library folder in your user folder (I had been looking at the system's Library folder originally). Click into Library folder, did a search on "Logi". Found a bunch of leftover logitech folders. Moved those to trash (like other posters recommended).

Restarted. And no more irritating login item notifications.

Reinstalled LogiOption+ or whatever it is called for my mouse. Made sure to have all autoupdates and notifications off in the Logitech options for the mouse.

Restarted. Still no login item notifications

I had initially tried the sudo command. Didn't work unfortunately.

Safe mode restarts hadn't helped.

Looks like the issue was prior Logitech apps left a bunch of junk in the hidden Library folder in your user folder.

Good luck!

Deleting the properties files in the LaunchAgents folders worked for me.

@etresoft Have you seen the described behavior first-hand? Have you tried deleting the launch agents? Do you have any first-hand tests to back up your assertion: "Nope. Not gonna work."

I would be interested to know if anyone who has actually tried this solution has had a bad outcome.

It would be a very good idea to do a time machine backup before doing this JUST IN CASE. But at the very least @etresoft is wrong in some cases when he says "will have no effect or cause damage."

etresoft wrote "I realize Apple has provided an interface to disable these tasks."

System Settings > Login Items lets us "turn off" login items but this has no effect on the startup noise.

"If you try to modify the app bundles, the app may not launch at all."

This is what we want: neither the app nor its parts launch at all until we explicitly open it. Then we can update, straighten our tie, whatever.

Didn't Windows used to have a "certified" sticker to guarantee that an app satisfied certain benchmarks before being blessed? Ah, the good ol' days. ;)

2c,

-dave

Jeremy Bolesky wrote:

Deleting the properties files in the LaunchAgents folders worked for me.

Of course. By doing this you are uninstalling, or rather, breaking your installation of some 3rd party software.

@etresoft Have you seen the described behavior first-hand? Have you tried deleting the launch agents? Do you have any first-hand tests to back up your assertion: "Nope. Not gonna work."

I have not seen this problem in real life. But then, I'm very careful about installing 3rd party software. I don't install the kinds of flaky stuff that most people do. However, I can assure you that I do have extensive knowledge about anything involving launchd tasks.

I would be interested to know if anyone who has actually tried this solution has had a bad outcome.

Technically speaking, they've all had a bad outcome. The "fix" is removing some software that the user most likely installed for some specific purpose. It's just that it will probably be much later when people figure out that some 3rd party software is not working correctly because they've broken it somehow.

I would prefer if people took a more pro-active and mindful approach so they know exactly what they are doing and exactly what the consequences might me. If they do that, then if they decide later that they really did need that software, they will be able to check back with the developer, confirm that it has been updated with a fix, and they can re-install it. But just randomly deleting files? Nope. Bad idea. Every time.

In some case, people disabling these options in the Login Items user interface, and/or deleting files, but then not completely removing the software may actually be causing these repeated notifications. I know that if I were writing software that depended on launchd tasks, I would probably include a "self repair" feature to protect the software from end-user vandalism. I think some of this may be a result of developers actually trying that, but being too aggressive about it.

It would be a very good idea to do a time machine backup before doing this JUST IN CASE. But at the very least @etresoft is wrong in some cases when he says "will have no effect or cause damage."

And therefore, following the logic of proof by contradiction, @etresoft must therefore be correct in some cases when he says "will have no effect or cause damage".

dhave wrote:

etresoft wrote "I realize Apple has provided an interface to disable these tasks."

System Settings > Login Items lets us "turn off" login items but this has no effect on the startup noise.

Yes, because it is more complicated than that.

"If you try to modify the app bundles, the app may not launch at all."

This is what we want: neither the app nor its parts launch at all until we explicitly open it. Then we can update, straighten our tie, whatever.

No, sorry. You can't have it both ways. You can either install the app and let it run as designed or you can uninstall the app properly. The fundamental problem here is that Apple gave users a third, invalid, option to hack up the app in ways that it wasn't designed to operate. Plus, Apple added these notifications to keep users informed.

But those are two separate things. For one, Apple never should have provided this interface. That was just a bad idea. The notifications, however, were actually a good idea. Unfortunately, many developers had simply always been managing their launchd tasks incorrectly. It is only these repeated notifications that are displaying those 3rd party errors in flashing lights.

Didn't Windows used to have a "certified" sticker to guarantee that an app satisfied certain benchmarks before being blessed? Ah, the good ol' days. ;)

Apple has the too. It is called the Mac App Store.

Most of these launchd tasks are not allowed in the Mac App Store. Mac App Store apps did allow a certain kind of login item. But Apple was always very strict about those login items. They couldn't be required for the app to function. The app had to give users a way to manage the login item. Apple enforced this through its App Review process. If an app didn't do the login item properly, it got rejected.

The problem here is that Apple took that good idea from the Mac App Store, tried to implement it for all Mac apps, and is enforcing it through the user interface and notifications. But Apple never checked with 3rd party developers to ensure that their apps could actually function properly without their accompanying launchd task. They just gave users an interface to disable the tasks. And I think Apple didn't realize that so many 3rd party app developers were simply managing the launchd tasks incorrectly in the first place, causing all the notifications.

I think there is a good likelihood that Apple will notice the notification problem and fix it through a software update. I'm not saying that Apple will fix it. I'm just saying that it may be technically possible.

But that is strictly about the notifications. The more general problem of end-users vandalizing apps is more general. It may take a few years before more 3rd party developers understand this change and adapt to it. Many 3rd party developers have no idea because they actually have very poor Mac support and no one has told them. Instead, everyone blames Apple. In this case, much of the blame is Apple's. But for certain [redacted] reasons, Apple probably isn't going to change this. For the next couple of years, people who want their 3rd party apps to work properly had better made sure to avoid this new Login Items user interface in Ventura.

Jeff, this worked for me, thank you! I had files in all 3 locations contributing to the constant notices. Fixed!

Note that others in this thread caution against doing this for applications that you use. In my case I had removed four applications and their residual files in locations identified by Jeff caused the notices. This seems to be an easy solution for notices generated by apps no longer needed or removed.

It would be nice if the background plane in Login Items allowed management of notices :-)

etresoft wrote:

Of course. By doing this you are uninstalling, or rather, breaking your installation of some 3rd party software.

All my 3rd party software is still installed and working fine. And the major annoyance this thread _should_ be about has been resolved using Jeff Chapman's advice.

Technically speaking, they've all had a bad outcome.

I didn't.

"At the very least @etresoft is wrong in some cases" allows for the possibility that @etresoft is wrong in every case.

I would be interested to know if anyone who has actually tried this solution has had a bad outcome.

There are posts where people removed the launchd plists only to discover to their dismay the no longer worked. On others, the app just “repaired” itself and the notifications resumed. Is that a bad outcome? Perhaps if you are the user who still wants to use the app and has a limited understanding of the actual problem.

I only have three apps that use background tasks and they all behave. I uninstalled one to see how it would respond when I reinstalled. It only generated the privacy notification once on install. So, there are app developers who know what they are doing.

Jeremy Bolesky wrote:

All my 3rd party software is still installed and working fine.

Not if you have deleted parts of it. You just haven't exercised any of the functionality that is now broken.

And the major annoyance this thread _should_ be about has been resolved using Jeff Chapman's advice.

That advice was wrong. Users should not go into hidden folders and randomly delete files. Those files were put there for a reason. This specific thread is unusual because the first post included a list of very specific files. Many similar reports include items that say only "open" or "osascript". Advice that was wrong, and wrong even in a very specific and relatively unusual situation. In other cases, it could be dangerous.

I didn't.

You just haven't noticed it yet. You are welcome to hang around the forums for the next few months and help clean up the mess that will inevitably result from this bad advice.

"At the very least @etresoft is wrong in some cases" allows for the possibility that @etresoft is wrong in every case.

I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out I was mistaken.

Jeremy Bolesky wrote:

You are suggesting that the plist files contain not just startup commands and prefs, but code required by applications to work, and that deleting the plist files could cause not just (at worst) an immediate failure requiring a restart or possibly a re-install of one non-compliant application, but a slow or delayed degradation of the application with access to that code, and that deleting plist files will cause ongoing problems and may affect not only that one application, but other applications or the OS. Is that what you're saying?

Yes. That's correct.

Deleting plist files is one of the troubleshooting steps I use when applications (particularly Adobe apps) are having odd freakouts.

Don't do that.

While it hasn't always fixed the issue that prompted me to delete the prefs, it has never caused a drawn out series of problems to pop up, and has yet to cause things to get worse than whatever problem I was trying to fix in the first place. At the worst, I've gotten a request to reinstall an auto-updater (as I did with the Microsoft auto-updater in this case--a prompted, one click process) or had to re-customize user preferences that had been reset to their defaults.

I think you are confusing launchd plist configuration files for preference files. Technically, they are both "plist" or "property list" files. But that's where the similarity ends. The launchd plist configuration files define which helper apps, background daemons, licensing servers, etc. are launched and under what circumstances. They are literally part of the app. If they are deleted, then the app won't run properly. In some cases, the launchd tasks are used just for auto-updates, but in other cases, they constitute the fundamental functionality of the software.

That being said, you shouldn't even delete preference files either, except maybe in very specific circumstances. There is actually a system launchd daemon that manages all preferences. The proper way to hack or delete preferences is to use the "defaults" tool. But even then, there may be running apps that still have the old preferences. Therefore, you also have to do a "killall" on all "cfprefsd" tasks. But even that isn't ideal. If you really want to reset preferences, you should delete the plist files while either logged out of the user account (for user-level preferences) or while booted in recovery (for system-level preferences).

The problem of a dozen or more notifications that cannot be batch dismissed popping up on every restart and some app launches is probably worth fixing for most people. Many of the arguments against the approach of deleting the autolaunch plist files seem to suggest that it will cause more problems than just the theoretical possibility of needing to reinstall an application. That's not how it works.

It is not a theoretical possibility, it is an absolute certainty. Deleting the plist files corrupts the app. What happens to an app that has system extensions running but no daemons to control it? I don't know. You don't know either. You've listed maybe six apps. The only one of those that I use is Microsoft and I'm pretty sure deleting the licensing daemon will cause it to stop working. If not, then I guess I wasted my money with that subscription I just paid the other day. I'm such a sucker, eh? But regardless, there are thousands of apps. Making any kind of blanket recommendation based on your experience with a handful is not a good idea.

The best idea is to stay out of threads like this where people might post advice that only works in certain circumstances and could cause serious problems in other cases. Instead, users should start new questions for their own, specific problems. Then, if you know for certain they are only using apps that can be safely hacked as you describe, you can then make that recommendation, and tell them to make sure to keep checking with the developer and reinstall the app once it is updated to work better with Ventura.

Many of the arguments against the approach of deleting the autolaunch plist files seem to suggest that it will cause more problems than just the theoretical possibility of needing to reinstall an application. That's not how it works.

Most of the guidance is the same as every other problem posted here, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Most problems are different, even if they appear to be the same. Start your own thread with your specific details and get your specific problem handled. Running willy-nilly through the file system deleting everything isn't a solution to any of these specific issues.

For me, deleting the plist files didn't damage any applications.

For those, it might not have. Years back, I had a Garmin navigation set. Its software installed a Launchd plist to put a completely useless menu in the Status Menu area. Its only purpose was to open or quit the app. Deleting the launchd plist cause the app to crash on launch. I dumped the Garmin.

Why did you delete the launchd plist file for all of those apps? Were all causing notifications? Off your list, I only have a slightly old version of Office (2019). It doesn't cause any notifications. Maybe Microsoft's licensing helper doesn't check every time you open an app, so yours hasn't caused any noticeable harm. I have seen posts that say Office causes notifications, but I haven't got a response as to what version they are running. Perhaps the old version doesn't cause that problem, only the newer 365 apps.

I can just imagine one of my users searching for a solution to this problem and after reading this thread thinking they had to live with or have me fix it because this simple solution was going to cause data loss or burn everything down.

Or, they could actually read the thread and know they just need start their own thread to get specific help with their specific problem instead of blindly ripping through their Mac disemboweling it.