Hi Mike,
The instructions below pertain to macOS Sonoma 14.0.
One approach, probably the best, is to open
System Settings...
from the Apple Menu; then, click on
General
in the left-hand column, then click on
Login items
in the right-hand column, and then look through the items listed under the title
Allow in the Background
For me, the two culprits were listed there as
OSMessageTracer
and
UpdaterStartupUtility
The action I took was to toggle off both those items. (A toggle "switch" for each "Allow in the Background" item is located at the right edge of the window.)
Unfortunately, I suspect that not too many other users will find those particular items in the "Allow in the Background" list. If that applies to you, you might try the following.
First, take note of which items in the "Allow in the Background" list are toggled on. (A window shot or two is a good way to accomplish that. For instructions, see Take a screenshot on your Mac - Apple Support).
Then, toggle off all items in the list, or perhaps all those that look suspicious or that you cannot identify.
Then, restart your Mac and see if your problem has disappeared. If it has not disappeared, then these instructions are useless, and you should just toggle on again all the times you toggled off, and restart.
If on the other hand your problem has disappeared, then hunt for the culprit item(s) systematically, perhaps as follows: toggle back on about half the items you previously toggled off, take note of which items you toggled back on, restart your Mac, and see if your problem is still gone. If your problem is still gone, then the culprit item(s) are among the items you previously toggled off but have not yet toggled back on. Etc etc etc. I think you will see what to do from here.
Some wizard out there may well have a more efficient approach than the binary-search-like method in the previous paragraph. Wizards, please speak up.
