How to Remove Startup Programs in macOS Catalina

Whenever your device starts responding slow or takes forever to boot, tech experts often advise you of one common solution, and i.e. to remove unwanted startup items. Isn’t it?

Wondering how to remove startup programs on Mac? Well, you’ve come to the right place. But before we proceed, let’s get a basic understanding of what are startup items and how they impact your device’s performance.

Also read: 10 Common MacBook Problems and How to Fix Them

What are Startup Items? Why are they Used?

Be it Windows or macOS, startup items or login items are a crucial part of any OS. The Startup items are apps and services that automatically launch as soon as your device restarts. Startup items are designed in a way that they don’t need any permission to execute, they just run automatically.

Although, when your device gets loaded with too many startup items, it may burden the processor leading to slow response time, system lag, and other common issues. Hence, an ideal approach to keep your device’s performance in a top-notch state is to get rid of unwanted startup items to efficiently utilize your system resources.

Let’s get started and learn how to remove startup items on Mac.

How to Remove Startup Programs on Mac

Well, one of the best ways to Remove Startup Items on Mac is to use a third-party utility to manage multiple startup programs at once. We recommend using Cleanup My System, it’s a must-have cleaning and optimization tool to fine-tune your system’s performance and accomplish a variety of tasks like – – cleaning junk files, removing mail attachments, trash files, managing login items & so on.

Follow the instructions mentioned below to learn the process of managing Login Items:

STEP 1 = Download and install the Cleanup My System application on your Mac.

STEP 2 = Launch the application, navigate to the Startup Manager and click the Start Scan button.

STEP 3 = As soon as the scan process gets completed, the results are categorized under Launch Items & Login Items. By default, all the items are selected, to retain specific programs, deselect the ones you would like to keep, and hit Clean Now to remove the selected ones.

And it’s done!

In just a few clicks, you can eliminate the Startup programs on your Mac with the help of the Cleanup My System utility.

Also read: 10 Best Mac Cleaner Software & Optimization Apps In 2021 (Free & Paid)

How to Remove Startup Programs on Mac (Manually)?

Well, removing startup programs on Mac manually is a quite tedious process. Follow these steps to begin:

• Tap the Apple icon, select System Preferences> Users and Groups.
• Select your user name from the left menu pane.
• Now, switch to the login items tab.
• Here you will see an entire list of startup programs installed on your device.

• Select the ones that you need to remove, and then hit the “-” button placed underneath.
• After removing the startup items, reboot your device to check if it helped in improving the booting time of your device.

Also read: How to Fix macOS “Recovery Server Could Not be Contacted” Error

How to Remove Daemons and Launch Agents from Mac?

Daemons and launch agents are types of startup programs on Mac that are used to automate processes. Although, they are hidden in the folders and it is quite typical to locate such items easily. Here’s a quick way to find and remove daemons and launch agents on your MacBook.

Open Mac’s Finder> Go.

In the search window, type “/Library/LaunchDaemons” and hit the Command key.

Scroll through the list of Launching Daemons files, delete the ones that you no longer require.

NOTE: Before you decide on deleting any important file, make sure you do a quick Google search to know a little about the file description. Some Launch Daemons files are critical for your system’s functioning hence these shall remain untouched.

Head back one level, in the Go search bar, type “/Library/LaunchAgents”.

Launch agents’ files are used during the login process. Scroll through the list of files, if you find anything suspicious, move it to the Trash Bin.

Also read: How to Control+Alt+Delete on a Mac and Force Quit apps

Conclusion

So, folks, this wraps up our quick guide on how to remove startup programs on Mac. You can either use a third-party tool like Cleanup My System to get the job done or pick the manual way if you want to dig deep into settings. After removing the unwanted startup programs, you will experience an enhanced performance on your Mac.