"Background Items Added" in Ventura 13.1

I was overwhelmed by the messages and what people were saying to do to fix it so I called support.

After working with them for an hour it stopped.

We clicked on system settings > general > login items, and then highlighted each item in the "open at login" box and hit the minus to delete it. Restarted and has been fine ever since.

Hope it works for you.

I was overwhelmed by the messages and what people were saying to do to fix it so I called support.

After working with them for an hour it stopped.

We clicked on system settings > general > login items, and then highlighted each item in the "open at login" box and hit the minus to delete it. Restarted and has been fine ever since.

In Ventura it's Library > LaunchAgents (at least on my M1) that did the trick. I removed all of the ones associated with the problematic apps (and of course removed the apps before that), rebooted and voilà no more notifications. For apps that you keep and toggle off the Background apps button, they will keep popping up notifications. The only way I found to stop those was to turn them on.

My senior tech wasn't in high school for sure lol, she was an older woman, and she knew her stuff. But not the "stuff" about the app. The app that was driving me bonkers was OneDrive. I had just installed it and only had two files on it. I wasn't impressed so it's not a big deal if I delete it. It's still sitting on my computer, I'm afraid to touch it. Everything has worked since I did what she instructed, by removing everything in the login list, we did one app at a time to see if we could pinpoint any one of them, and the last one was an android transfer app of some kind, that I don't remember installing, and that was the culprit, after removing that things have been running smooth. Thankfully, because I was getting 50+ of those dang messages every reboot.

Hi, there is my solution,

1. download "Tencent Lenmon cleaner"
2. click "manage login item"
3. just expand item, in my case is "edge updater" or something else, and click "scope button" beside login items to show them in finder
4. just delete it!

I've done most everything everyone has suggested with LaunchAgents/Daemons, Startup Items, etc. without any success.

Not particularly surprised. Every app is different. What works for some doesn’t work for others. It is not an OS problem, but an app problem highlighted by the OS. You can’t just Willy-Billy delete parts of the app and hope it solves the problem. You have to determine what app is causing the problem, uninstall it using the developer’s uninstaller or instructions, then maybe try reinstalling.

The senior tech I spoke with said that some of those items do load at login and some don't.

I spoke with two different support techs about this occurring on my iMac, and they had me disable and shut off a bunch of things, but I was still getting the dang message. Neither could understand even while screen sharing with me, they said it shouldn't have been continuing since we unchecked the items. And the second was a senior tech because the first guy couldn't help me.

The senior tech, had me delete three of four items in my Login Items, and it still happened, we didn't remove the last item (some kind of Andriod trsf app) because we didn't know what it was, but out of desperation we eventually removed it, and that's what it took for the message to go away. She had no clue why it was happening, it shouldn't have been an issue, and the fix shouldn't have been the fix. So something is clearly wrong.

WriterNat wrote:

The senior tech I spoke with said that some of those items do load at login and some don't.

Correct! Way to go, Apple Support!

I spoke with two different support techs about this occurring on my iMac, and they had me disable and shut off a bunch of things, but I was still getting the dang message. Neither could understand even while screen sharing with me, they said it shouldn't have been continuing since we unchecked the items. And the second was a senior tech because the first guy couldn't help me.

Remember that, in this context, "junior" and "senior" are relative terms. The "senior" might actually be a "senior" in high school.

The senior tech, had me delete three of four items in my Login Items, and it still happened, we didn't remove the last item (some kind of Andriod trsf app) because we didn't know what it was, but out of desperation we eventually removed it, and that's what it took for the message to go away. She had no clue why it was happening, it shouldn't have been an issue, and the fix shouldn't have been the fix. So something is clearly wrong.

Just to follow up. Whatever files you deleted were associated with one or more different apps. Those apps are now broken. If you needed those apps for something, you're now SOL. In some cases, if you try to run those apps, they might still work. They just might not update themselves properly. Ironically enough, if this happens, and the developer does issue a fix for this new Ventura behaviour, you'll never get it because you disabled the auto-update feature. But in other cases, the apps may not run at all, or they may run only partially, perhaps causing problems for other parts of the app that are still running and you can't disable even if you wanted to.

My recommendation is to completely remove any affected apps. You may be able to reinstall them later if you really need them. Please don't use any "app zappers" or "clean up" apps. Already, you are deep into the territory of apps that are difficult to uninstall properly. Those tools will only make a greater mess out of the situation.

Found an answer in Reddit, look in the Library > LaunchAgents folder and remove the problematic .plist (if your no longer have the app on your Mac), reboot and you shouldn't receive the notifications (nor see the app in the background list).

Works for some things. Check the neighboring directory, LaunchDaemons, for additional culprits. Found disturbing items there from apps never used. Apple claims to police security - how did this stuff all get in there?

Still cleaning these up doesn't stop all notifications. Also check, as noted above, Settings/General/Login Items.

The most elusive appears to be Spotify. I get this kind of notice regarding Spotify, but there are no entries from Spotify in either of those directories. Actually, no file or directory with Spotify in the name anywhere on my hard drive. But, in Login Items, there is an entry for Spotify, which I have turned off. Where is this bugger?

Frustrated, I search for .plist in Finder. Great googly-moogly. Over 1000 finds. 305 app.data (these all from Evernote, which I do use, invoking plists), 174 .tagset (these seem mostly to be related to Apple music, also invoking plists), remainder a balance of plists and .h files (from SDKs, etc.).

tagsets (whatever they are) have cryptic names (e.g. 000000b0-00000000-45424147.tagset), app.data are named only that, plists have vague names (e.g. SystemVersion.plist) as do .h (e.g. SMErrors), not transparently associated with apps.

To identify, I put Finder in list format, observed directories displayed at the bottom of Finder.

Threw away one plist from Google. I don't knowlingly let Google on my machine, but they are elusive.

No sign of Spotify.

None of this nuisance happened before Ventura.

Because the OS didn’t tell you it was happening doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening. You installed apps that ran background processes, but you didn’t mind when you did t know. Now, the OS tells you it is happening over and over because the app is constantly trying to run that background process. If you attempt to disable the process, the app tries again.

You can see above how annoying it is. Apple muffed this. It was a good idea to let us all know what had formerly been hidden in the background. But, the implementation, providing multiple repeating notifications at the slightest provocation, was an error in the OS.

Perhaps that was the intention.

texter_101 wrote:

You can manage this in Login Items Settings.

Apple's dialog box isn't being very truthful on this part.

I tried to delete the background item in /Iaunchdaemons and /launchagents.

Don't do that.

then I turn the launch agent off

Don't do that either.

it still shows me this notification. Sometimes, I get this notification 8+ times in a row.

I recommend uninstalling Microsoft Edge until Microsoft is able to update it to work properly with Ventura. I haven't noticed any problems with Microsoft Office, but perhaps Edge doesn't quite have the same expertise and the more high-profile Office team.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to uninstall Microsoft Edge. I can't find any information on the web site. The Microsoft support forums direct people to a non-Microsoft site. That site says to drag the Microsoft Edge app to the trash. I don't know if that will work, but it can't hurt. If you continue to get these notifications, then there are some other tools that can be used to find out what Microsoft has installed and where.

It may be necessary for you to reattempt to do what I advised you not to do above. If you've already tried to delete those Microsoft files in LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents, then you know where to find them. There is probably also a LaunchAgents folder in the Library folder in your home directory. I normally don't like to recommend that people do that. This is a good example. If you have Microsoft Office installed, deleting those files could break your Office installation.

You might also try to disable these Microsoft tasks using Settings > Login Items. The same caution applies. This new user interface in Ventura is unusual. It is designed specifically, and solely, to break the installation of 3rd party software. So if you use it and Office break, well then I guess it worked.

But the key thing here is that if you try to delete the files in LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents, and disable those same tasks in Settings > Login Items, and then restart, then that should stop the notifications as long as you never again launch any Microsoft app for the rest of your life. Chances are, if you run any Microsoft app, it will attempt to correct the damage that you've caused (as well it should). But hopefully by then Microsoft Edge will work better with Ventura and that will resolve the problem.

Easy, eh?

Your note about "system" files reminded me that Apple hides a lot (for mostly good reasons). I ran:

ToggleShowAllFiles.scpt

(don't recall where I acquired that, a couple of years ago)

to unhide everything, then found several offending files from Epson in Library/Launch Agents and removed them, then emptied trash. Could not find the offending file from Spotify. Perhaps they have obscured it, not including their name. Shame on them if so. Apple should police that. After all, they police the App Store.

Afterwards, ran ToggleShowAllFiles.scpt again, to restore normal viewing.

Fingers crossed.

jkr98116 wrote:

to unhide everything, then found several offending files from Epson in Library/Launch Agents and removed them, then emptied trash. Could not find the offending file from Spotify. Perhaps they have obscured it, not including their name. Shame on them if so. Apple should police that. After all, they police the App Store.

Those Epson and Spotify apps are not from the App Store. I think this entire problem actually is Apple's effort to police non-App Store apps. People are deleting the apps that are triggering these notifications. In the App Store, Apple rejects an app that doesn't do the login items properly. For these apps, Apple is having the end user do the rejecting for them.

In any case, this is clearly a Ventura flub. I suppose Apple tech support is saying nothing because they don't want to acknowledge the goof. Hopefully, they're quietly fixing it for a subsequent OSX release.

I agree, but I have less confidence that it will be fixed. One of the problems here is that I simply have no answer to give anyone. I can't even tell people how to properly uninstall these apps since that is now so complicated. A couple of years ago, Apple introduced a new type of system extension that, if not uninstalled properly, requires erasing the hard drive to remove (or some advanced command-line actions that can't even be mentioned in this forum). Apple never fixed that problem. This is over and above all of the "authorizations" that these things now demand. Apple is playing hardball with 3rd party developers and users are stuck in the middle.

I recommend that users stick to Mac App Store apps whenever possible. Otherwise, they will continue to have problems with each new OS release. After all, nobody complains about these problems on iOS, now do they?

Simple solution: Issue of multiple popping up messages at the startup i.e. "Software from (Microsoft Corporation or Microsoft Edge) added item that can run in the background. That has worked for me fine.

Solution is simple and effective: Click on Finder. Look at the top, where you will see a “Go” in the Menu items. Click it. You will see near the bottom of drop down “Go To Folder”. Copy and paste “~/Library/LaunchAgents/”. A message like this will open “Users > [Either Your Name or Your Apple ID in the form of Email] > Library > launchAgents. Now delete every the problematic *.plist. Simply shut down your machine and reboot and you shall not receive any of the notifications that has been bothering you so far. This has worked for me fine. Thankyou.