Programmatically run at startup on Mac OS X?

Question

How do I programmatically set an application bundle on Mac OS X to run when the user logs in?

Basically, the equivalent of the HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windo

Answer 1

A working example below.

Create a file

~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.everydaytasks.plist

With contents:

    Label
    my.everydaytasks
    ProgramArguments
    
        /Applications/EverydayTasks.app/Contents/MacOS/EverydayTasks
    
    ProcessType
    Interactive
    RunAtLoad
    
    KeepAlive
    

See the original post that helped me to make this example:

https://superuser.com/a/229792/43997

To test you need to run this in terminal

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.everydaytasks.plist

To unload

launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.everydaytasks.plist

See also

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/launchd.plist.5.html

The is the other way of adding your application to starup using "Login Items". See this example project on how to implement it:

https://github.com/justin/Shared-File-List-Example