Background items on Mac: what "Allow in the Background" means, which ones to turn off

What Login Items & Extensions actually shows

Since macOS 13 Ventura, System Settings has a single screen for everything that starts without you double-clicking it. Open System Settings, General, Login Items & Extensions and you will see two lists.

Open at Login is the simple one: full apps that launch when you log in, the way Spotify or Slack might. You can add and remove entries with the plus and minus buttons, and removing one has no side effects beyond that app not launching by itself.

Allow in the Background is the confusing one. Each row is a helper that an app registered with macOS, grouped under the developer or app that owns it. These helpers are not apps you launch. They are launch agents and launch daemons (small property list files that tell launchd, the process that starts everything on a Mac, to run a program at login, on a schedule, or when something happens) plus menu bar helpers and login items that an app installed as part of itself. A toggle next to each one turns it on or off.

Howard Oakley, who writes the Eclectic Light blog and has documented this screen since it appeared, put it bluntly: "Ventura's new Login Items is misnamed from the start", and "many of those listed appear unidentifiable". That is the core problem. The list shows you a developer name, or sometimes just "Item from unidentified developer", and leaves you to work out what it does.

A typical Mac has 10 to 30 entries here. Most are updaters (Google, Microsoft, Adobe), cloud sync engines (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive), hardware helpers (Logitech, Razer, Elgato), and menu bar utilities. None of them are malware by virtue of being here; this is simply where legitimate software puts the parts that need to run quietly.

Why you keep getting the "Background items added" notification

The notification appears whenever something registers a new background item, or re-registers an existing one. Three situations produce it:

• You just installed or updated an app. The app registered its helper. One notification, then it stops. Normal.
• An app re-registers itself on every launch or update. Some updaters and helpers rewrite their launch files each time they run, which macOS counts as a new item. That is the "every time I reboot" case people describe, and it is annoying rather than dangerous.
• An app's helper is being blocked and keeps trying. If you turned a helper off, the app may keep trying to re-add it. In one Apple Community thread about a recurring Google notification, the answer was that the user had disabled the Google updater, so "Google can't update itself", and the updater kept re-registering.

The notification is informational, not an alarm. macOS shows it so you know something new will run in the background, in case you did not expect it. If it names an app you just installed, dismiss it. If it names something you do not recognize, that is worth a look, and the next section covers how.

How to find which app a vague entry belongs to

Entries labeled with a developer name you half recognize, or "Item from unidentified developer", are the ones people worry about. Here is how to identify them without installing anything.

• Hover over the row. On recent macOS versions, holding the pointer over a background item shows a tooltip with the path to the file. The folder tells you the owner: something under /Library/LaunchAgents or /Library/LaunchDaemons named com.adobe.something.plist is Adobe's; ~/Library/LaunchAgents is per-user and usually belongs to a utility you installed.
• Click the small "i" or the row itself. Some entries reveal the owning app or let you show it in Finder.
• Read the reverse-domain name. Launch files are named like a backwards web address: com.google.keystone is Google's updater, com.microsoft.autoupdate is Microsoft's, com.logitech. anything is Logitech, com.adobe. is Adobe. The second part is the company, and that is nearly always enough.
• Look in the LaunchAgents folders yourself. In Finder, press ⇧⌘G and go to /Library/LaunchAgents, then /Library/LaunchDaemons, then ~/Library/LaunchAgents. Each plist file name matches an entry. You do not need to open or edit them; just reading the names answers the question.
• Check Activity Monitor. If the helper is running right now, its name appears in the CPU or Memory tab. Select it and click the "i" button to see its path and parent.

"Item from unidentified developer" means the helper is not signed with an Apple Developer ID. That is common for open-source tools, scripts you set up yourself, and older software. It is not by itself a sign of anything bad, but it is a reason to find out what it is before leaving it on.

How an app ends up in the background list

What background items cost you (battery, startup, memory)

Each enabled item is a process that starts at login, which is why a Mac with thirty of them takes longer to become usable after a restart. Once running, most sit idle and cost nearly nothing. The expensive ones are the few that do real work: a sync engine scanning folders, an updater checking servers on a schedule, a hardware helper polling a device that is not even connected.

On a MacBook, that matters twice. First, some helpers wake the Mac from sleep or hold it awake, which is one of the causes of a battery that drains with the lid closed. Second, a helper that uses a steady 2 to 5 percent CPU all day is a constant small drain you never see, because it never shows up as a window. The widget below shows what one night looks like when a background helper keeps waking the Mac.

To see what your own helpers are doing, open Activity Monitor, Energy tab, and sort by 12 hr Power. Helpers you have never heard of appearing near the top are the ones to turn off.

Which background items are safe to turn off

A simple rule: if you can name the app, and you would not miss the helper, turn it off. If you cannot name it, identify it first (section above). If it is Apple's, leave it.

Usually safe to turn off:

• Updaters for apps you open rarely (Google Keystone, Microsoft AutoUpdate, Adobe updaters). The app still works; it will just check for updates when you open it instead of in the background.
• Helpers for hardware you no longer own (a mouse, webcam, printer or audio interface you replaced).
• Launchers for apps you deleted. If the app is gone from Applications and the entry is still here, it is a leftover.
• Menu bar helpers for apps you use once a month.

Leave on:

• Anything from Apple. These are part of macOS, and the toggle often does nothing anyway.
• Cloud sync you rely on (iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive). Turning the helper off stops syncing.
• Security and VPN software, password managers, backup tools.
• Anything you cannot identify, until you can.

Turning an item off is reversible: flip the toggle back and it runs again at next login. It does not delete anything. The one annoyance is that some apps re-enable their helper on every update, in which case the only lasting fix is the one Oakley gives: "If you want the property lists to stay removed, you have to remove (or not use) the app."

What to do, in order

1. Open the list

   System Settings, General, Login Items & Extensions. Scroll to Allow in the Background.

2. Identify every entry you do not recognize

   Hover for the file path, read the reverse-domain name, or check /Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchDaemons and ~/Library/LaunchAgents in Finder. Write down what each one belongs to.

3. Turn off leftovers from deleted apps

   If the owning app is no longer in Applications, switch the item off. If you want it gone from the list too, reinstall the app and use its own uninstaller, then delete it properly.

4. Turn off updaters and helpers for rarely used apps

   Updaters for apps you open a few times a month can go. The app will still update when you open it.

5. Leave Apple, sync, security and backup items on

   These are doing a job you want done.

6. Restart once and check

   Log out and back in, or restart. The Mac should reach the desktop a little faster, and the Energy tab in Activity Monitor should show fewer unknown helpers. If something you use stopped working, turn its item back on.

Stopping leftovers before they happen

Most leftovers come from one habit: deleting an app by dragging it to the Trash. That removes the app bundle but not the launch files it installed in the Library folders, so the entry lingers in Login Items, sometimes still running a helper for an app that no longer exists. A MacRumors-style complaint shows up in every forum thread on this: you can turn the entries off, but "I cannot remove them".

Two habits fix it. First, when an app ships its own uninstaller (most of Adobe's, Microsoft's, and hardware vendors' do), use it. Second, for apps without one, check the LaunchAgents folders after deleting and move any plist with that app's name to the Trash. Those are the only files you need to touch, and they are yours to remove: they were written by the app, not by macOS.

If the Mac is still slow after the list is tidy, the cause is somewhere else; see why is my Mac so slow for the full checklist. Background items are one of the smaller levers, and a clean list of ten is not noticeably faster than a list of twenty. The win is on battery and on knowing what is running, not on raw speed.