Remove programs or services that start automatically on mac
Our macs often have a bunch of annoying background services or programs that start up automatically after installing some annoying programs. If you want to remove them all, here are a few ways for you.
Before we start, keep in mind that you may have to reboot after each step to take effect.
1. Remove all login items.
Go to system preference => Users & Groups => Login Items
Remove all thins listed here.
2. Remove Launch Agents & Daemons.
Open your finder, and type Shift+Command+G , A path switch window will pop up.
Next, go to the following three locations and delete all files in them.
Please note that if you have some manually added startup items, please review these files one by one before deleting them.
/Library/LaunchAgents/Library/LaunchDaemons~/Library/LaunchAgents/Library/PrivilegedHelperTools
3. Use the launchctl command to cleanup unneeded services.
Open your terminal (or iTerm2, Warp, etc.).
(If you don’t know how to open Terminal, please google this issue by “How to open terminal on my mac”.)
Then, put this command: launchctl list | grep -v com.apple .
It will show all the non-apple service, and if you want to remove a service, just use launchctl remove <service-name> .
4. Remove unnecessary apps or services one by one.
If somethings still cannot be cleaned up, then you can try to open the activity monitor on your mac to stop & clean them one by one.
For the step to open the Activity Monitor, please google “How to open activity monitor on my mac” if you don’t know how.
Then you can look in Activity Monitor for the item you want to stop or clear. Here is an example of "PC-cillin for Mac". After finding the item, click the "i" icon above the activity monitor to see the detailed information. Then, click "Open files and ports", you can see the file location of this thing from the text below.
Finally, you can use the mentioned Finder shortcut shift+command+G again to move to the file's location, and then remove it.
5. Use third-party software to remove them.
Googling for various mac cleaners is also a practice.
But I personally don't recommend you to use those cleanup programs, because most of them will add more nuisance background services on your computer, or login items.
Conclusions
In addition to the above methods, there are definitely more ways to clean up the Mac. If I think of it in the future, I will write additional articles to share, or you can contact me directly to discuss how to make the computer more clean.
