Anyone know how to stop a plethora of files and folders from opening automatically every time I boot up my Mac computer?
The Internet says I should go to Login Items and uncheck things I don’t want to open. Yet none of those are listed and every time I start up my computer, a flurry of things I don’t want to open, open.
I love my Mac but this drives me crazy every morning.
Here is a 100 question personality test asking the same question 100 times with slightly different wording - please complete before we look at your application. Are they just seeking out desperate applicants?
Just to clarify, you’re saying you shut down your computer every night and restart it in the morning? Like it’s not just sleeping, it’s actually powered down? And then you start the computer, it goes through the boot sequence, maybe you have to login with a password, and then a bunch of applications start opening?
My mac is always on so it’s rare when it has to startup (maybe once every 2-3 months). Either (1) I’m installing software that requires a reboot, (2) there was some kind of crash or freeze that locks everything up and requires a manual reboot, or (3) there was a system crash (“kernel panic”) that automatically restarts the computer.
When either (2) or (3) happens, it generally knows what applications were open when it crashed and tries to restore the state of the computer when it restarts. This restoring from a crashed state sounds sort of like what you’re describing (i.e., a bunch of applications all start launching automatically as soon as I log in). But when starting up from a normal shutdown it should not be starting any applications other than the ones you specify through Login Items.
Correct. Every morning I boot open the computer afresh and about 15-20 windows, files, and programs open. These are not listed in the Login Items. Even if I have previously closed them before shutting down for the night, they open right back up at launch the next morning.
That is strange. I’ve never heard of that behavior and don’t really have any ideas (other than to stop turning your computer off every night 
).
Quick google says
~/Library/LaunchAgents/
contains everything that gets started at login but be careful what you move out of there. The .plist files are what gets started for you. Don’t delete them in case it was something you need. Might want to check if a different user has the same things starting up as there is also one for all users but I wouldn’t mess with that unless you really know what you are doing.
Thank you. Yeah, that’s way beyond my technical level. I think I’ll just take my laptop to the Genius Bar in a couple weeks when I’m back in the U.S. and hopefully resolve it there.
Yikes, spammed a dozen job listings on indeed and got zero responses. would have gotten > 8 in 2022.
What’s your rough qualifications? What type of listings?
i just searched for jobs in my preferred (backend/frontend) framework w/o a salary filter and spam applied. ~5 yoe
How long of a timeframe from applications to this post?
1 week
Me a couple weeks ago: I think I’ll use a man-in-the-middle proxy to intercept Instagram Android’s API traffic, how hard can it be.
Me now: Yeah I just got done writing an extension for Burp Suite Pro in Java so I can capture the traffic I want as well as blocking some responses to the app which I don’t want. I had to use a patched version of the Instagram APK to defeat SSL certificate pinning, unfortunately though later versions of the app default to HTTP3/QUIC which is not captured by TCP proxies, and the way the APK patch guy defeats that is by deleting the config file the app gets from the server, unfortunately that removes permissions it gets which I need, so of course I had to revert to version 255. The proxy was getting a little overloaded so I had to exempt a bunch of the traffic from it, also my AutoHotKey script was getting convoluted so I opted to hot-patch the user preferences file using ADB to simplify it.
Try restarting the computer and unchecking the box that re-opens currently open apps.
Thank you. Yes, idiot me finally figured out a few days ago that I had been checking that box every night when shutting down. The problem was not the computer but my own stupidity.
A little less stupid now so problem solved.
Is contracting the best shot at getting to work from abroad? Best way to find contracting jobs? LinkedIn?
Not sure what you mean exactly. I’m on a regular programming job and work from home, could do it from another country as my (small) company is in, as well (actually planning to, mid-term). So for me, the best shot is / was working for a company remotely.
Yeah, I think working remotely for a small company is another option. It would help if they were letting you use your own machine - which is what I have seen often with contractors.
Copilot has been a net negative for me I think. It has maybe had a tiny increase on my personal productivity, but all that and more was squandered by having to review some nonsense code from a coworker where he got copilot to generate thousands of unique data states to test a function when only a few of them result in different behavior