9 Nov 2007 by Chris     No Comments    Posted under: Gadgetry and IT

The case of the disappearing login items

I’ve always had a problem that login items disappear under OS X, and it hasn’t gone away with OS X 10.5 Leopard. I’ll add something to the list in the conventional manner, and about 50% of the time, when I next startup the Mac, the application fails to do so – and on investigation, has disappeared from the list.

So here’s my home-made solution. Take all the applications out of the login items list and replace them with an “Automator” script. You can then put this in the login items and with any luck it’ll stay there; it did for me. You can also add some nice pauses between each, so the Mac doesn’t go mental trying to open everything together.

If you’ve never used Automator before, it’s really easy. Open it up (it’s in “Applications”), and drag over the “actions” you need, which are “Launch Application” and “Pause”. Drag over as many as you like, you can rearrange them quite easily. Set each “Launch Application” to the application you want to open at startup, and set each “Pause” to a suitable delay, just about long enough for the application to launch happily (see above). Then save what you’ve done, making sure you choose “Application” under “File Format”, so the thing runs when started, rather than opens up for editing.

Then add the Automator script you’ve just created to your login items, and remove any applications you’ve featured in the script.

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