Executive Summary,
Startup items in Apple OS-X

This is a technical guide which will hopefully explain
the assorted ways Apple OS-X starts up and runs programs.

Now that we are all running Leopard (10.5.x), we are aware that all items are started by launchd , controlled by launchctl , and configured by assorted .plist files. The startup files are found in various locations, some are provided in the following tables.

Provided by the user:
Location Type
~/Library/LaunchAgents/ Per-user agents.
~/Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist Per-user applications.


Provided by the administrator:
Location Type
/Library/LaunchAgents/ Per-user agents.
/Library/LaunchDaemons/ System wide daemons.
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/ Per-user agents.
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ System wide daemons.
/Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist System wide applications.

Please be aware that many of the "old ways" of doing things are still supported, such as:

  1. /Library/StartupItems/
  2. /System/Library/StartupItems/
  3. /etc/rc.local
  4. /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist
  5. /etc/mach_init.d/
  6. /etc/mach_init_per_login_session.d/
  7. /etc/mach_init_per_user.d/

For more specific information, please see my detailed list.

NOTES:
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