109. Set Applications to Launch Automatically at Login BEFORE YOU BEGIN 2Find, Launch, and Quit an Application SEE ALSO 110 Enable and Disable Automatic Login 114 Automatically Log Out One final way to customize your Mac OS X user environment is to have one or more applications launch themselves automatically as soon as you log in (or boot the computer, if you have automatic login enabled). You'll find this very useful as you become more familiar with Mac OS X and with the applications you want to have running to be more productive. For instance, in the course of writing this book, it's necessary for me to have Snapz Pro X (the premier screen-capture application for Mac OS X) running at all times. Rather than hunting it down and launching it every time I start the computer, I can have it launch automatically. TIP An even quicker way to accomplish what's described in this task is to right-click (or Control +click) an application's icon in the dock and choose Open at Login from the contextual menu; this adds the application to your Startup Items list. 1. | Open the Accounts Preferences Open the System Preferences application (under the Apple menu); click Accounts to go to the Accounts Preferences pane. | 2. | Select Your Account Your account is the topmost one shown in the list, and is probably already selected. If not, select it. Your account options display, such as your full name and password options. | 3. | Go to the Login Items Click the Login Items tab. 109. Set Applications to Launch Automatically at Login | 4. | Find the Application in the Finder Open a Finder window and navigate to the Applications folder (using the shortcut in the Finder's Sidebar, for example). Find the application you want to launch at startup or login. | 5. | Drag the Application to the Login Items Window Click and drag the application from the Finder window into the Login Items list. If there are already items in the list, you can place the new one anywhere in the list you want; the order of the items in the list determines the order in which they are launched. This order might be important, in case some of the items depend on other items already having been launched. If you need to change the order of the listed applications, remove and add applications in the correct order. TIP You can add other items than just applications to your Startup Items list. You can add a document, and it will launch at startup in the application that it's set to open in; or you can add a folder, and the folder window will open at startup. If you add a remote server's icon to the list, Mac OS X attempts to connect to that server as soon as it logs you in, making sure you always have immediate access to items stored there. | 6. | Add or Delete Items If you'd rather not drag applications to the Startup Items list, you can use the + button below the list box to pop up a navigator sheet you can use to pick the application to add. To delete an item from the Startup Items list, select it and then click the button. (This action only removes the item from the Startup Items list; it doesn't delete it from the computer.) | |