Ventura Notifies User of New Login Items
wow so now Apple is going to use my personal name in user notifications to tell users I’m personally installing login items on their machine. I think there’s a difference between the app (that users voluntarily install) doing things and me doing things. That’s… very wrong.
macOS seems to have gotten his name from the code signature on his app. The notification is a potentially useful feature, but it would be better if it reported the name of the app that added the login item. The user doesn’t have a good way of finding the app that corresponds to the reported developer name. Also, showing the developer’s name is especially confusing in the case of an indie developer, where it shows a personal name rather than the name of a company. The notification makes it look like a hacker named “Thomas” broke into your Mac.
This is really terrible UX, and if you see it while testing macOS 13 please report it as a bug.
Update (2022-10-17): Marcin Krzyzanowski:
security by obscurity or what. What’s the point of that 🤔 it literally cannot be more generic information Image
This is going to be so confusing for users.
Update (2023-01-05): Adam Maxwell:
This has all been working fine since 2010, so obviously Apple needed to change something. Aside from the obvious notification bug, TeX Live Utility users have no idea who this “Adam Maxwell” guy is, and shouldn’t have to learn.
OMG, months into Ventura and I still get notifications like this when I reboot. Literally no idea or explanation what this is.
Previously:
Update (2023-02-03): Christina Warren:
The never-ending “Background Items Added” pop-up for an item I already disabled or already know about is the most annoying part of Ventura after the new System Settings design.
Numerous Mac users are repeatedly encountering a bug in macOS Ventura that throws up Login Items notifications for various background app processes every time they start up their machine, even when the processes in question have been disabled.
[…]
Scouring the complaints across Reddit, Twitter, Apple Support Community discussions, and various other app-specific forums, app processes such as Google Updater, Adobe CC Helper, and Dropbox are repeatedly cited as culprits, but these only appear to be referenced more often because they are popular apps with background processes. Almost any third-party background process can seemingly be referenced in the persistent Login Items notifications.
Update (2023-02-14): Norbert M. Doerner:
The new bug in macOS 13.2 can hopefully be fixed by using Apples Terminal.app and paste and run this command:
sfltool resetbtmYou may need to restart your Mac once to see this in effect.
Unfortunately, the
resetbtmoption for thesfltoolcommand line tool is not documented by Apple, the man page does not list it.
Update (2023-02-16): macOS 13.3 Beta:
Fixes an issue introduced in macOS Ventura 13.1 that caused the system to post excessive “Background Items Added” notifications after toggling items in System Settings > General > Login Items. Toggling items in macOS Ventura 13.2 doesn’t cause excessive notifications, but that release doesn’t automatically correct the issue inherited from macOS Ventura 13.1.
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> The notification is a potentially useful feature.
It will be really useful when Apple will:
- post these notifications to notify the end user of all the Apple services/daemons that are running without the user knowledge.
- allow end users to disable all the Apple services/daemons (such as the iTunes, Photos, Spotlight, Ubiquity, etc. daemons) that are running without their knowledge or consent.
There's always an irony to bad Apple UX, that Apple's UI / UX evangelists were recently posting to twitter about how to get in contact with Apple, to get UI / UX advice to make their apps "better".
There's some real Dunning-Kruger effect going on at Cupertino.
I remember having the same problem with new KEXTs being installed. The security system preferences would show some developers name and the only option was to "allow" or ignore the whole thing. Using Google helped but it's still a super frustrating experience.
This is par for the course with Apple now. Are any of the people designing and implementing these features giving it the slightest bit of thought? It's Apple's OS. There's no excuses for not being able to do the right thing.
Can someone make sure right click and choose "Open" still works for an unsigned app?
What happens if an unsigned app installs a login item (that's unsigned, I guess?)
Hi Thomas,
As you forecasted, taking a look at the extensions installed into my system, i saw an extensions named "Thomas CLEMENT", and of course i immediately disabled it...
Then i seeked for information, and felt on that article.
Thanks for your clarification.
So, as far as i can understand, you are a developer of SpamSeive, correct? So this extension belongs to SpamSeive.
Merci!
Best regards,
Christian
@Christian I’m the developer of SpamSieve. Thomas makes TimeMachineEditor.
“App name X signed by publisher Y” would be better. Even that would be confusing because the app name may not be familiar to the user. Chrome’s auto updater is Keystone so even “Keystone published by Google” would be confusing to people.
From using BlockBlock I know these don’t just happen when the app is first installed. It may happen when selecting “open at start up” in preferences but at least that is tied to a user taking an action. More concerning is that auto updating apps can add them in the middle of you doing something else when they happen to update themselves. Dropbox for example will do it when it updates.