Mac OS: Opening applications in the background (like the good old times)?

As per this article : macOS Sierra: Quit apps

Quit all apps when you restart, shut down, or log out

1. Choose Apple menu, then choose Restart, Shut Down, or Log Out. For more ways to restart, shut down, and log out, see Log out, sleep, restart, and shut down.
2. In the dialog that appears, deselect “Reopen windows when logging back in.”

If an app doesn’t quit as expected, you can force quit the app (you may lose unsaved changes). Choose Apple menu > Force Quit, select the app in the dialog that appears, then click Force Quit.

This article states for quitting the apps , but you want the apps to be running in the background so don't force quit any app and keep it running and shut down the system .

And do exactly the opposite settings in the article as you asked in your question .

What about editing the Info.plist of the app (ArchiCAD in your case) like suggested here. It's not a global solution, maybe it's useful though.

Cath_S wrote:

Tried it, the app wouldn't start if the the info.plist is edited that way. It creates some error.

A few things here:

1) Probably info.plist is NOT the one file you should be editing.

My guess, since I don't have the application, is that the plist file is likely to be

~/Library/Preferences/com.graphisoft.archicad.plist

2) In any case, an error in a preference file can easily cause the application to fail to start or behave erratically.

3) The plist files can be in one of two formats - binary or text. Text files are plain XML and can be edited manually, but of course you have to know the syntax. XCode can edit both kinds graphically and is the default if it is installed.

FWIW, I tried the suggested method with Motion, and it DID work. Launched Motion (which takes a few seconds), immediately switched to another application, and Motion never came to the front.

"Many instances of the same app" is something that you normally cannot do in macOS. You can have many open documents for the same application, but you can't have two instances of, say, Safari, running at the same time without running through hoops.

Can you be more specific about what you are doing?

What application?

Most applications start quite quickly, and in most cases you do not need to quit, or restart your mac.

If you can ellaborate a little more, maybe we can offer more suggestions.

Guess I don't understand. You state... "some app I open pops up and stops me from writing." If you're opening another app, you've already stopped writing, right? Or do you mean some app that had been previously opened, is still open in the background, and some activity occurs with that app, it suddenly becomes the active window ?

Let me see if I finally understood:

you launch an application that takes a long time start (say 30 seconds), you go on to do something else, like write an email, and you don't want that application to grab focus once it finishes loading.

You were offered a solution that does just that (it works, I checked), but involves (in its present form) using the Terminal.

Maybe you can explain why the proposed solution does not suit you.

It can easily be turned into an Automator application or Service, so that you don't need to use Terminal at all.

That is a tough one.
Since you need to interact with ArchiCAD to launch these extra copies, I think you could send them feedback and request a feature like "Open silently in a new ArchiCAD" or "Open in a new ArchiCAD behind the current one".

That should be easy for the developer of the application to implement; to do it from the outside would only be viable if ArchiCAD offers very strong scripting access - which I can't say, since I don't have the program, but I would not expect very much.

The thing is most applications nowadays start practically instantly, and when a user clicks or double-clicks to launch it would be very perplexing if the application did launch but stayed in the background... suppose you are in the Finder and, say, click the Mail icon in the Dock. How would feel if Mail did not come up? How would a common user feel?

Launching applications in the background has never been the default, and with good reason.

Maybe there used to be a modifier that let you launch an application silently, but I do not recall that being the case.

Maybe ArchiCAD used to work differently, or maybe something changed in the system, I don't know.

The only place that I recall where there is an option to launch applications silently is in the Login Items section of System Preferences. For each login item, there is a checkbox to "Hide" - meaning it launches but does not come to the front.

Just to add, I've occasionally run into an app which actually does open in the background. Of course my assumption was it was broken, which it was, and was eventually corrected by the developer.

I would be extremely annoyed if an app I wanted to open did so in the background and I was forced to bring it forward into focus.

Lastly, I've been using Macs since 1985 and I don't remember any apps opening by default in the background.

"Doesn't mean you are stupid either." Phew, glad you clarified that ! I didn't mean to insult or belittle you, hope it didn't come across that way. I was just trying to understand the issue. But yes, I do understand complex programs and that people are different and that different people use programs and work-flow differently. I was in customer service for many years and routinely used 3D CAD analyses that took hours to compile and run. I hope you find something that works for you.

Try the Terminal solution mentioned in this thread.