How to Add, Remove, and Delay Startup Items on Your Mac
How to Add Startup Apps on Your Mac
If you work with the same applications on a daily basis, setting those applications to launch automatically can help you save some time. Here is how to do it:
- Open Your System Preferences and click on Users & Groups.
- Click on the Login Items section that is in the right panel.
- Click on the + (Plus) button below that panel, and in the Finder dialog box that comes up, choose the app that you want to start automatically when you log in.
- Repeat the above to add more apps as necessary.
In some cases, you might want to make sure that an application window stays hidden when the app launches which means that the window does not come up in the foreground right away. To make this happen, click on the Hide checkbox which is next to the application in the Login Items list.
Note: A quick look at the left-side panel would show that you are editing the startup items for the current user account by default. If you have admin rights, you can control that startup items for a different user by clicking on the relevant username that is in the list. If the settings are grayed out, you will be required to enter an admin’s credentials first by clicking on the padlock icon at the bottom of the Settings panel.
How to Turn off Startup Apps on Your Mac Temporarily
It is possible to stop startup application on your Mac from running automatically on a temporary per-login basis. This can be quite helpful when you need to log in quickly say when you’re troubleshooting your Mac to fix startup problems.
If you do not want to see the login screen, restart your Mac and hold down the Shift key when you see the progress bar. To turn off app launches when you are logging in, after you enter your credentials on the login screen, hold down the Shift key before you click on the login button. Release the key when the Dock comes up. macOS would now start without launching any startup programs.
How to Delete Startup Apps on Your Mac
If your Mac system boots up very slow, it is a possible indicator that you need to optimize your Mac’s startup programs. This is easy to do. Here’s how:
Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups.
Switch to the Login Items section to show the list of items that are set to automatically launch when your Mac starts.
To remove an app from this list, select the app and click on the – (Minus) button below the list.
How to Delay the Launch of Mac Startup Applications
Does your Mac have lots of indispensable startup items leftover even after you have cleaned up everything? You could turn them off, but then it would be tiresome to launch each application manually. Here is a better workaround: Delay Start.
This simple macOS utility allows you to spread out the timing of your launch items in order to reduce the load on your Mac. To use Delay Start:
Remove already existing launch items from System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items. To do so, select all the applications in the list and click on the – (Minus) button.
Click on the + (plus) button and add the Delay Start application to the list.
Now launch Delay Start. In the application, click on the + (plus) button to add the application that you want to open automatically at login.
Enter the time in the Time Setting box. macOS will delay the launch of that particular app by the time set above.
