Inspect Your MacĮach user on a Mac has the following LaunchAgents folders: Some of the most common malware, listed by MalwareBytes, that install themselves as launch items are OSX.CookieMiner, OSX.Siggen, OSX.Mokes, and more. The situation gets worse when a malicious app can launch itself by including a reverse-engineered helper application. To learn more about them, read our guide on LaunchDaemons and Agents and their importance in macOS. They both come under launchd, which is the primary parent process responsible for managing every other processes. Two such processes are: LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t expose these hidden components in the macOS interface. They don’t want you to see any app that makes you suspicious so they might hide it instead. If you believe that there’s malware on your system, you can check the login items and remove the unknown app.

“Persistence” is a technique by which malware ensures that it’ll get executed by the OS on startup. Whether it’s a malicious browser extension that injects ads into search results or malware that aims to steal you data, the primary goal of any malicious startup item is to run in the background for every macOS session. If you want the app’s window to stay hidden when it launches, click the Hide checkbox next to that app.Ĭatch Malicious Startup Items on Your Mac

Select your user account in the list on the left, and click Login Items.Ĭlick the Add ( +) button and, from the Finder dialog box that appears, select the app from the Applications folder and click Add. Open System Preferences > Users & Groups. If you deal with specific apps on a daily basis, you can save yourself a click or two by making sure to run them automatically every time you log in.

We’ll show you how to manage startup apps and catch the malicious ones on your Mac below. A startup app can also be malicious, so removing them can be critical for maintaining your Mac’s health. For example, Backblaze, Busycal, and Dropbox install background-only startup apps to perform their essential tasks for those apps.īut having too many login items can increase your Mac's boot time and decrease its performance. These macOS startup apps, often called login items, can be very useful. Every time you turn on your Mac, various apps and services launch automatically in the background.

Mac startup programs remove