How can I make a program start up automatically in OSX?

Question

I have a little program that I want to make open automatically when my mac is started up.

Because this program accepts command line arguments, its not as simple as just going to System Prefs/Accounts/Login items and adding it there...

From google, I read that I can create a .profile file in my user's home folder, and that will execute whatever I put in it... So I have a .profile page in ~ like this:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 matt staff 27 27 Sep 13:36 .profile

That contains this...

/Applications/mousefix 3.5

But it doesn't execute on startup! If I enter "/Applications/mousefix 3.5" manually into the terminal, it does work.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

From here and into the future, look into launchd for what you want to do. All other methods have been deprecated or are now unsupported. This is probably a bit more heavy-weight than what you want, though.

It could also be a problem with your version of the bash shell not correctly executing your .profile. Try putting the command into .bashrc in your home directory, and see if that helps.

Answer 2

You can use Lingon to help construct a plist file for launchd.

Answer 3

The most general way of launching things on startup on MacOS is using launchd. You can create a plist file to tell it to launch your program on startup, which can include arguments.

Answer 4

You can use Applescript which can run terminal commands, then have that applescript launched at startup.

Answer 5

The .profile and .bash_profile only come into play when you open a new shell (ie. opening Terminal or entering through SSH). Also, I believe if bash detects .bash_profile it won't look for .profile
If you want it start upon login, I would look at the other suggestions about launchd

Answer 6

You could always write a wrapper script that runs it with the arguments you want

Answer 7

Thanks all. The launchd solution is pretty cool, yes its heavyweight for such a simple thing, but its good to know, and as a developer I'm happy to tinker about :)