TUAW Tips: Login Items

Login Items can be your friend, or your foe. Located in System Preferences, under Accounts, you can find 'Login Items' waiting for your attention.

What are Login Items, you ask? It is an easy way to have applications launch automatically whenever you log into your Mac, plus there is an option to 'Hide' the launch, so it can be launched automatically and invisibly.

New, let's get back to the friend and foe part of this tip. Login Items can be your friend because it enable your Mac to launch all the applications that you always have running for you (i.e. your browser, email client, iChat, and what have you). No muss, no fuss. Cool, huh?

However, I bet that even if this is the first time you have ever heard of Login Items, there are items scheduled to run when you log in. This is because when you install certain programs they, in order to be helpful, create a Login Item for themselves (like Gizmo Project did on my Mac, a fact that I always forget). This can be a little annoying, and some Mac users may not know why Gizmo (for example) always launches when they log in. Mystery no more!

So, check out what is listed under your Login Items and remove anything you don't need, but also take the time to put this feature to good use because you want your Mac to work for you, not the other way around.

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Login Items can be your friend, or your foe. Located in System Preferences, under Accounts, you can find 'Login Items' waiting for your...

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Chris

And of course for any apps in your dock you can just right-click (or whatever the one-button equivalent is) to get a popup menu with an 'Open at login' checkmark in it.

February 05 2006 at 1:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Tod

I've been using Login Items for as long as I can remember. However, Tiger broke one of the most useful aspects: Letting the user determine the launch order. Pre-tiger you could move these things up or down within the list. Even the old help screen discussed this. When tiger was released, *whammo* you could no longer change the startup order and that part of the help screen was removed.

I particularly like this because I use DragThing and I use its process dock to switch applications. I like to group them. Can't do this anymore.

February 04 2006 at 5:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jerome

itunes helper is, i suspect, the cause of Software Update not believing iTunes is quit when it is...really annoying that. I expect it's there to monitor iPods appearing so it launches iTunes?

February 04 2006 at 3:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Longhorn

The only app I have problems with is Extensis Suitcase not hiding on boot up. It hides fine on my office G4 with Panther but not on my home G5 with Tiger....
Argghhhh!!

February 04 2006 at 2:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bill

Does iTunesHelper do anything *truly* helpful, or is it one of those generic "Speedifies the load time of iTunes" deals?

February 04 2006 at 2:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

CcntMnky

Does anybody else have problems with Mail not hiding? I've got the checkbox marked, and before Tiger Mail wouldn't open a window on login. After Tiger, Mail.app always pops up the window, dispite the state of the checkbox.

February 04 2006 at 2:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jan Kabili

I've disabled some of my automatically installed login items (like the one that started my screenshot software), because they were causing delays in start up time on my PowerBook. The convenience of having programs available on call wasn't worth the trade off of longer start up times.

February 04 2006 at 12:45 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

jerome

thanks...I should have said, both ports on my 6600 are full as i've 2 20" cinema displays. I'd have to install another card, I suppose? I have one sitting here my friend at Nvidia gave me but we don't know what it is (it was in an unmarked bag) but it is PCI-Exp and has 2 DVIs and a 3d link port....

Sorry to take up TUAW comments with this, been looking for a decent chatroom or forum to no avail today!

February 04 2006 at 12:32 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Gary

um... Shouldn't you delete the unknown Microsoft Database deomon? Is it not from a copy of Entourage that is not longer present on the system?

February 04 2006 at 12:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Peter Mankarious

Here's a link

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=M9267G/A

February 04 2006 at 12:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply