Mar 11, 2018 Say you are sitting in the office and you need access to a coworker's computer. You could physically go to that computer, but that takes both time and energy. Thanks to Mac OS X's remote login feature, there is now a faster way to gain this access. Remote login allows you to transfer files back and forth as well as perform other tasks. I have a 2009 iMac running Mac OS X 10.5.8 and an Actiontec MI424WR Revision E router running firmware version 20.20.8. I am trying to get Wake-On-LAN to work so I can then use LogMeIn whenever I'm away. It used to work several months ago, but now it is not. I have reset the router and tried to redo.

What are startup items?

Startup items, or login items, are services and applications that launch every time you start your Mac. These are applications that sneak into startup items without notice, never asking if you need or want them there. This way you may end up with a dozen apps launching as soon as you turn on your Mac, weighing heavily on its processor and memory capacities and slowing it down. Such items can increase your Mac’s startup time and decrease its performance.

Plus, sometimes when you remove an application or a service, it leaves a login item with a broken link. These broken login items are completely useless, cause unwanted messages, and waste your Mac's resources (because they look for non-existent applications). Whether you're running macOS Catalina or El Capitan, or earlier — it's all the same, so just read on.

So, let's go over how to take control of login items, and how to get rid of unwanted, broken or hidden startup items.

How to disable startup programs?

Do you want to stop programs from running at startup? There’s an easy way to remove programs from startup and get your Mac to load faster on launch. The fastest way to turn off startup items on Mac is an app like CleanMyMac X.

Download CleanMyMac for free.
Launch the app.
Open Optimization tab.
Click on Login items.
From the list of apps, disable the ones you don’t need on startup.
Done!

How to change startup programs manually?

Disabling Mac startup programs is possible manually. Therefore, if you have some time and would like to do it yourself, follow the steps below.

Your login items are listed in settings. One of the easiest ways to control startup items is inside System Preferences > Users & Groups.

Open System Preferences.
Go to Users & Groups.
Choose your nickname on the left.
Choose Login items tab.
Check startup programs you want to remove.
Press the “–” sign below.
You’re done.
If you need to add an item back, press “+” and choose the app you’d like add.
Then restart your Mac to see the changes.

How to fix broken startup items?

Broken Mac startup files are left there because some part of apps are left on your Mac long after you’ve moved the app to the Trash. To get rid of these parts and to fix your startup, you’re going to need CleanMyMac again. First, you need to check if they’re among startup items and disable them if so. You can do it following the instructions above. Then you need to remove app leftovers. CleanMyMac works fine on macOS High Sierra and earlier OS.

Launch CleanMyMac.
Choose Uninstaller tab.
Scroll through the list of apps.
If you spot any app that you’ve deleted, check them.
Delete the app leftovers you’ve chosen.

You can also find and remove broken login items with the help of System Junk module:

Choose System Junk tab.
Click Scan.
Review details and click Clean.

Finally, you need to clean your macOS startup items through launch services:

Open Maintenance tab.
Choose Rebuild Launch Services.
Hit Run.
Done.

Once you do it, all broken app data on your Mac will be fixed.

Remove daemons and agents from startup process

If speaking of files, first go to the system folder /Library/StartUpItems. Here you’ll find all the startup files that are being launched with the system. You can delete the login item you think is necessary if you’re totally sure what you are doing.

Also, the /Library/LaunchDaemons folder contains a bunch of preference files that define how the application that is being launched along with the system should work. You might want to delete some of these files as well if you know you don’t need them and removing them is safe.

The /Library/LaunchAgents contains preference files responsible for the apps that launch during the login process (not the startup).

The above-mentioned folders contain app-related files. However, you can also check system folders to review whether you need some of the system applications to be running on startup:

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons - note that besides preference files this folder contains other important system items that are recommended to keep untouched.
/System/Library/LaunchAgents - most probably, you won’t also find anything worth removing in this folder, however, keeping this location in mind might help you find files related to a problematic app that causes troubles on Mac startup. If you have a problematic application that messes about on login, you can try to trace it back from this folder.

But, if you’re looking for simple ways to remove login items, we suggest using a professional Mac utility. Download CleanMyMac X for free and make unwanted and broken login items a thing of the past.

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by Kyle D'Addario
& Wincent Colaiuta

Console Yourself: Understanding Mac OS X Logs
August 3rd, 2001

Underneath the bright and shiny new Aqua interface of Mac OS X comes a completely new Unix foundation that is unlike anything Mac OS users have experienced before. One of the most attractive aspects of this new foundation is the set of industrial-strength networking applications that come with it. We've looked at many of these in previous Hot Cocoa columns. They include things like NFS (Network File System), Samba/CIFS (Windows filesharing), AFP (Apple File Protocol), FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and robust Web serving with Apache, the world's most popular Web server.

As an inseparable part of all this Unix technology we are also welcome to the world of logs. Logs are text files that form a record of what has occurred on the system, much like a journal. This column will serve as an intro to some of the key logs that you'll find on your Mac OS X system. We'll start by looking at the system console log. So if you can't see the wood for the trees, console yourself and delve into the wonderful world of logs...

The console app

Take a look in the Applications/Utilties folder of your Mac OS install you'll find a little application named 'Console.' If you've ever tried running this app you'll have seen how it likes popping to the front of your screen every now and then and flashing some nearly intelligible textual messages for a second. What this program is actually doing is monitoring a little file called 'console.log' that is stored deep down in the filesystem at the following location:

Everytime something new gets written to that file the Console app flashes its window up to the front and lets you know what's happening. So what sort of things get written to that file? Most often, the answer is error messages and warnings. All programs that are running on the machine will occasionally emit error, warning and status messages in a textual form. If the events they refer to aren't significant enough to demand a user's immediate attention, then they usually get routed to a log somewhere, and it is the console.log that gets many of them.

Unfortunately, the Console application leaves a lot to be desired. This app is a simple front-end to the Unix command line tool 'tail.' When you run the graphical Console application what it is actually doing is issuing a 'tail -f /private/var/tmp/console.log' command behind the scenes, taking the output from that command and displaying it in a pretty Aqua window. (The tail command, as the name suggests, shows the tail end of a file. The '-f' switch instructs the t