Auto startups and daemons

[AshevilleGuy]

I'm a IT guy who supports PCs all day long. I have moved to Mac for my personal home computing and love it. In supporting PCs I've always relied on software tools to look at what starts up on a PC when you boot-up/login. When it comes to the Mac world, it seems there are no good, easy, FREE tools to do this. I'm aware of the startup items that you can disable in System Preferences -> Users/Groups -> Login Items. But what about all the daemons? I found CCleaner (historically a good PC product and free) that allows you to stop some of the Starrtup programs. But am I missing any others? I don't want to hear about going in Terminal and doing that. This is 2020, I want a GUI.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Because of the differences in the way that Windows-based PC and macOS-based Mac operating systems function, there isn't much control over things like daemons and other system-level processes. macOS also doesn't have a Registry per se, like Windows does.

Login Items is the best way to control what is launching at startup. Yes, some third-party applications install daemons and plist files, which launch things at startup, but there isn't any GUI software applications that I am aware of to customize this. Pretty much all of the macOS built-in kexts and daemons will load as needed, and not waste valuable CPU processes when not.

That said, there are a few third-party utilities that allow you to adjust macOS parameters, such as OnyX, Cocktail, TinkerTool, etc. But, applications like MacKeeper, CleanMyMac, and others can actually do more harm than good.

Let us know if there is anything in particular you are looking at.

C

 

[AshevilleGuy]

Login Items covers maybe 50% of what might start up on a typical Mac (outside of all the com.Apple stuff). So, that leaves the question on how to control the other 50%? CCleaner (it's free) I've found covers most of that 50%. But I find it pretty funny that it took a Windows originating software, to be brought over to Mac, to give someone the ease of use that is needed in controlling this stuff. I just wonder if there is any other free software similiar to CCleaner that might work better or would be more useful.

What's the harm that something like CleanMyMac can do? Removal of log files? I tried it and it seems to like to toot it's horn over cleaning up space when it seems that the majority of what it's "cleaning" is emptying the trash bin and deleting all the system logs and cache files. Then it says it's going to run 3 tasks. Flush the DNS, Free up RAM, and run maintenance scripts. Flushing the DNS isn't really necessary unless you're having some kind of DNS issue. Freeing up ram can be done with a reboot. And maintenance scripts? maybe there is something there? I don't know.

 

[AshevilleGuy]

P.S. - One thing that CleanMyMac did that I have yet to find elsewhere is that it found partially uninstalled apps. I had one that was gobbling up 108GB of space! 108 gigs! What the hell? So, being a relatively new Mac user, we need more user-friendly, and free tools to do some simple maintenance on our computers.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

CleanMyMac seems to be a good utility these days, but had some issues a few years ago. As you mentioned, many of its functions can be performed for free by simple system/user computer usage processes - emptying the trash, restarting, macOS log automatic archiving/deletion, etc.

Software applications like MacKeeper are known to cause major issues, have been described as invasive malware, and are not recommended by most Apple support folks. Antivirus applications, while note technically needed for most folks, can cause system slowdowns if their real-time scanning functions are left enabled.

I am interested in what partially uninstalled application was taking up 108 GB? And, did you have to run some form of scan with CleanMyMac to find it?

I agree that some new utilities would be great...guess we'll have to wait for some developer to fill that void.

C

 

[AshevilleGuy]

iMazing from iMazing.com was the app. I was using it in my IT position in an attempt to gather data from an iphone. I uninstalled the app a few months ago then realized that at some point I had lost a lot of free space. The CleanMyMac app actually pointed it out that it was a partially uninstalled app and it was consuming 108GB of space (from an iPhone back up it made) but didn't delete after I uninstalled it.

I do have to keep an eye on CleanMyMac because after every single time I open it, it adds itself back to the auto-startups and I always have to turn it off.