How do I disable "reopen windows when logging back in"

It is interesting that on a macbook pro which never gets turned off, this isn't a problem (obviously).

On a mac mini it drives me nuts.

I wonder what type of machine the guys who were designing and testing this great "feature" were using. It certainly wasn't in a real world environment.

But that is not the main point, which is this is a backwards step in terms of user control and user experience, Please fix it Apple, it is sloppy and not what we expect.

Go to System Preference and click on General.

In "Number of recent items" area, unthick "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps".

That's all.

Sorry nyepie.... Wrong!

That setting is only for when you reopen an application not when you are trying to resart the machine!

Here is what you need to do, am sure it does work.

1. Close all windows and quit all apps.

2. In Finder, hold down the Option key and click ‘Go’ in the menu bar at the top.

3. Choose ‘Library’ (you have to have the Option key held down to see Library in the menu).

4. Navigate to Library > Preferences > ByHost > com.apple.loginwindow.[xxxxxxxxx].plist

The [xxxxxxxx] represent some interminable string of numbers and letters. Don’t mistake it for the similarly entitled Unix executable file. What you need to check is that its ‘loginwindow’ and ‘.plist’ at the end.

5. When you’re sure you’ve identified the right file, select it and press Cmd-i to show the ‘Get Info’ window. Click the ‘Locked’ option.

6. Now, test that it works. Close the ‘Get info’ window and the finder window. Open up Safari, Preview and a couple of windows. Do a restart and behold — if you followed the instructions correctly — a clean desktop!

I too want to add my weight to this desire. I absoultely hate that I cannot change the default behvaior of the shutdown check box. I want to do a clean shutdown the majority of the time, not the other way around. Please allow us to change or disable the default behavior.

I too would like to know how to fix this. I often have many applications open at work (10+ most days) and at the end of the day I want them all to exit upon shut down. I do not want to have tons of application opening in the morning when I turn on my computer. I will open them as i need them throughout the day. I do not see how this feature is useful at all, unless you only use 2 or 3 light apps. It's a bummer that apple is forcing this feature on us.

System Preferences >> General tab. See screenshot below.

If you are attempting to prevent applications from launching when you log in to your account, then you need to go to the Users & Groups pane in System prefs and disable the login items.

J.Morris:

While your suggestion is correct for opening the previous windows OF an application... It is NOT correct is opening applications that were open when you restart your mac!

The peoblem here is one of power users vs adverage users... We here are, for the most part, power/developer/enthusiasts users and use our computers as work horses. The reasons we restart (and have to log back in) is beacuse of a problem of some kind with the current state of the computer and when we do we want to box to come up clean. NOTHING RUNNING just "The Finder".

If everytime we do this we need to quit every application then it is one (or 20) more steps we have to accomplish before we can get back to work.

What we want from Apple is a correction of this by adding a default of some kind to the "Shutdown/Restart" dialog. Either by giving us an option in the system pref or by remembersing the state of the checkbox from the last Restart.

Thanks for your contributions to the forum.

eric

Locking the plist for login window is the only solution that works effectively, and it's been posted to this thread 4 times. I suggest everyone try it.

that checkbox is OFF by default in a new mac os x 10.8

It's funny we need to pay for a major OS update just to get that checkbox turned off!

They could fix it anytime with Lion update, as obviously an Apple programmer spend just 1 minute to fix it in a code.

Solution!!!

1. Go to System Prefrences.

2. Click on the General tab

3. un-check "restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps".

Hope this helps.

You and others really need to read the thread and understand the question before giving your "solution".

Agreed! This is soooo annoying on so many levels.

That being said,

Having this popup every time I restart/logout/shutdown... pales in comparison to the fact that it doesn't remember its previously checked state.

For a real fix : 1) no pop up confirmations unless you want to. 2) setting up how you want ALL of your resume features to work in the system preferences.

come on guys.... lets get on this...

Come on Apple! This is easy to fix.

We are just users here, not Apple.

A solution is given in this thread (locking the plist).