Mac OS Quirks

Just a few quirks here when as come across something that seems like an oversight in Mac OS.

After reboot, MacOS opens all the programs that were open before shutdown.

NOTICE: This is no longer a recommendation, the latest update to sonoma seems to ignore this fix.  The checkbox to 'Reopen windows when logging back in' during the restart does work.

This isn't a feature. When I restart my Mac, I'd prefer nothing opens, ever. What general tech support recommends (System settings -> Desktop & Dock -> "Close windows when quitting an application") does not solve this problem, as well as 'Reopen windows when logging back in' doesn't appear to work.

I've found that you can prevent this annoyance by preventing writes to the com.apple.loginwindow.plist file.

Open terminal, then type the following:

mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist.backup
touch mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
chmod 000 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

This shouldn't cause any problems as it appears the com.apple.loginwindow.plist file keeps the list of windows to open after login. If anything odd happens, or this causes any trouble, you should be fine just moving the backup file back to its original place:

mv ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist.backup ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

Some features aren't available in Finder, or have been removed over the years.

Grab TinkerTool to restore some of these features.