How can I stop Lion from reopening applications upon startup?

"Open your System Preferences, go to the System row and click on the "Users & Groups icon. Click on the "Login Items" tab. If those applications are listed there, click on the small minus button at the bottom and remove them one by one." --Forums.com

I don't think that's what is being asked (unless I'm mistaken). That applies to what used to be called "Startup Items" but the name has been changed to "Login Items".

What is being asked if this:

If you have applications open, and you need to "restart" your computer, how do you restart it without all of those same applications opening up again when the computer restarts? I know that the little check box is there in the restart window, but we don't always have that option if we have to force it off, then back on.

For the time being:

1. Check you startup items are, and uncheck.

2. Do not forget to uncheck ‘reopen windows when logging back in’, a message you see when shutting down or restarting.

If manually deleting specific apps saved Resume states is too tedious for you, you can always choose to just disable the Resume and App Restore feature completely in Mac OS X 10.7.

• Launch System Preferences and click on the “General” icon
• At the bottom of the “Number of recent items” list, uncheck the checkbox next to “Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps”

This is a sweeping change that impacts all applications and the Finder itself, meaning all apps will no longer save their previous state, including when you reboot your Mac.

Considering that Resumes is genuinely useful, plus it’s one of the snazzier new features that is heavily boasted about in OS X Lion, this should not be considered a recommended adjustment for everyone.

Alternatively, use TinkerTool which includes a by-app selection. Having Finder windows open is the only useful feature I'd ever be comfortable with. The other madness has severe privacy and security issues, whether highly touted or not.

Turning off write permission on the plist (via the term) seems to work for me, I had already gone through the options in the system preferences panel, as highlighted in the last few posts, and they did not prevent applications relaunching on each reboot. I am sure resume is a useful feature for some users, who only use a couple of applications all the time on their Mac, but it seems useless to the point of dangerous to people using mobile computers for work and recreational use on work and home networks, and using many different applications. It would seem that Apple included some ways to turn off resume. The problem is that on this new installation they don't seem to work.

You know you can hold the SHIFT key at login. This prevents any items set to autolaunch in System Prefs as well as any that were running when you logged out or restarted or crashed.

Of course, if you hold SHIFT during *startup,* you will be Safe Booting, which is very useful, but something else entirely. (It disables extensions until next restart, empties caches, and a bunch of other stuff. Helpfull if you are having general, unidentified trouble with your Mac.)

We had the same problem in Mountain Lion and deleting the following two files fixed the issue (both contained the entries of the applications that were opening on startup):

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.*.plist

With those files deleted no programs opened automatically even after logging out and logging in, or rebooting.

Problem solved.

You can do this with the following Terminal command:

defaults write -g ApplePersistence -bool no

Thank you, I am going to try this.

Question: What command undoes this? (In case I want to go back to this default pesky behavior.)

This was an issue in 10.7.0, 10.7.1, and 10.7.2, beginning with 10.7.3, as a reaction of the numerous and nervous feedback, you may deactivate/uncheck automatic log-in of apps. What system are you now with?

You can undo that by replacing "no" by "yes".

But if you want to change that regularly, use the mark option when you shutdown

"Reopen windows when logging back in".

Shavingream wrote:

Thank you, I am going to try this.

Question: What command undoes this? (In case I want to go back to this default pesky behavior.)

I presume the way to re-enable the pesky behaviour is to issue this command in the terminal:

defaults write -g ApplePersistence -bool yes

Yes. Read the thread posts!