Startup items are the programs in your Mac operating system (macOS High Sierra for this example) that are scheduled to initialize every time your MacBook Pro starts.
Since you are required to log in with a user account to use your MacBook Pro, different programs can be configured to initialize at different user accounts’ login, and that is why the startup items are sometime also referred to as login items.
Although startup items can save decent amount of your time that you would otherwise spend in initializing the programs manually, they consume additional processing and memory that may sometime decrease your computer’s performance, especially when they are too heavy or too many in number.
That said, when you start experiencing performance issues while using your MacBook Pro, you may consider keeping some non-essential programs from initializing automatically upon startup (users’ login).
Here’s how you can add and remove startup items on your MacBook Pro:
Add a Startup Item
- ■Get to the Users & Groups window
Click the Apple logo from the top-left corner, go to System Preferences, and click Users & Groups. This opens the Users & Groups window. From here you can add or remove new users or groups, change password for the users, change users’ profile picture, etc.
■Get to the Login Items tab
Select a user from the left pane you want to add a login item for (Jacob Moore for this example), and click the Login Items tab in the right pane. This takes you to the Login Items tab of the selected user. This tab allows you to add (or remove) the login items for the user.
■Add a startup item
Click the + (Add) icon from the lower section of the right pane, locate and select a program from the next window that appears (Safari for this example), and click Add. This adds the selected application to the Login Items list. From this moment onward, every time your MacBook Pro starts and the selected user logs in, the added program (Safari for this example) is automatically initialized.
Remove a Startup Item
- ■Get back to the Login Items tab
Follow the steps explained in the first and second points of the Add a Startup Item section to get to the Login Items tab of the user you want to remove a startup item from. From here you can add more startup items or remove the existing ones.
■Remove a startup item
Click to select an optional, non-essential program (Safari for this example) from the list in the right, and click the – (Remove) icon from the lower section. This removes selected login item from the list. From this point onward, the removed app (Safari for this example) would no longer be initialized when your MacBook Pro starts up and the selected user logs in.
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