How to remove login items left behind by deleted apps

27 October 2026 · 6 min read

To remove a login item left behind by a deleted app, open System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions (Login Items on macOS 14). Remove the app from “Open at Login” with the minus button, or switch its entry off under “Allow in the Background”. To get rid of a background entry for good, you find the leftover file in a Library folder, check that its program is really gone, and move that file to the Trash. Foreman finds these for you and marks them “Program missing”.

Nothing here is urgent. A leftover item is not a virus, and it does not slow your Mac down in any way you would feel. It is a note that says “start this program at login”, pointing at a program that no longer exists. Still, the notes pile up, and a tidy list makes it easier to see what really starts on your Mac.

Why deleted apps leave items behind

Dragging an app to the Trash removes the app. It does not go looking for everything the app set up while it was installed. Apps arrange to start themselves in a few different ways, and each way leaves its own trace:

A login item. A line in the “Open at Login” list in System Settings. The app asked to open whenever you log in.
A background item. A switch in the “Allow in the Background” list. These are helpers, updaters and menu bar tools that an app registered with macOS. What Allow in the Background means in macOS settings explains the switches.
A launch agent or daemon. A settings file, called a property list, in one of the Library folders. It tells macOS to run a program at login or at startup, and it usually appears under “Allow in the Background” as well. Launch agents and daemons on a Mac, explained in plain English covers where these live.

When you delete the app by hand, only the app goes. The property list in the Library folder stays, because it is a separate file that the app or its installer put there.

If the program the item points at is gone, macOS simply fails to start it, usually without telling you. The entry can stay in the lists in Login Items & Extensions, which is often how people notice it.

Step 1: Look in System Settings

Start with the part macOS shows you directly.

Open System Settings and choose General, then Login Items & Extensions.
Under “Open at Login”, look through the list. If you recognise an app you deleted, select it and click the minus button below the list.
Under “Allow in the Background”, look for names you do not recognise, or names of apps you removed. You can switch an item off with its switch. Items from a developer often appear under the developer’s name rather than the app’s, so a name you do not know may belong to an app you do know.

Switching an item off in the background list is reversible and leaves the file where it is. It stops the item from running, but the entry itself remains. That is fine if you only want it quiet.

This screen does not tell the whole story. It does not always make clear which file is behind a switch, it does not say whether the program that file starts still exists, and an entry under a developer’s name is hard to match to an app. To check, and to remove the file itself, you need the next step.

Step 2: Look in the Library folders

The leftover files live in three places. In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder and paste each path in turn.

~/Library/LaunchAgents holds agents that run only for your account.
/Library/LaunchAgents holds agents that run for every account on the Mac.
/Library/LaunchDaemons holds daemons that run for the whole Mac at startup, before anyone logs in.

Each file is named after the developer and the product, in a form like com.companyname.productname.plist. If a file’s name matches an app you deleted, it is a candidate.

Before you remove one, check that its program is really gone. Select the file and press the Space bar for a Quick Look preview, or open it in TextEdit, and look for the first path after ProgramArguments or Program. That is the program the item starts. If the file shows unreadable characters, it is stored in binary form; in Terminal, plutil -p followed by the file’s path prints it readably and changes nothing. If that path points to something in the Applications folder, check that the app is not there. If the path leads somewhere else, such as a folder under Library, look there too. If the program exists, the item is not a leftover, and you should leave it alone.

When the program is gone, move the file to the Trash. Files in the two system-wide folders ask for an administrator password. Do not touch the /System/Library folders at all: those belong to macOS itself, macOS protects them, and none of your deleted apps put anything there.

Restart the Mac afterwards, or log out and back in, so the old job is no longer loaded, and check that nothing complains. If you moved the wrong file, take it out of the Trash and put it back.

Step 3: Let Foreman find them

Hunting through three folders and reading property lists is tedious, and it is easy to misread one. Foreman does the same check for you. Its Startup Apps page lists everything that opens at login or runs in the background: login items, launch agents and daemons, and the background items apps register. They are grouped by the app each one belongs to, with readable names, and each has a status.

An item whose program is no longer on the Mac shows the status “Program missing”. You have two choices:

Select one and choose Remove… to take away that item only.
Choose Clean Up Leftovers to remove every “Program missing” item at once. If some of them are system-wide, Foreman asks for an administrator password one time for the lot.

The files go to the Trash, so you can still put one back. Foreman only removes leftover startup items. It does not uninstall apps, and it does not delete the rest of an app’s files. For that part of the job see What to clean up after you delete an app on a Mac.

Two details are worth knowing. Foreman reads login items through System Events, so macOS asks once whether it may control it. And to read the switches in Login Items & Extensions it needs Full Disk Access; without it, Foreman shows a note that you can skip. Items an app registered through macOS’s own login items system can only be switched in System Settings, and Foreman opens it there for you.

It costs $12 once and runs free for 24 hours, so a single cleanup can be done in the trial.

If the item keeps coming back

Sometimes you remove an item and it reappears after a restart. That means something is still putting it back. The usual cause is an app that is not actually deleted: a second copy in another folder, an updater that outlived the main app, or a helper in your user Library. Why a deleted app still shows up in login items goes through those cases. Find the program that recreates the item and deal with that first.

What to leave alone

A few rules keep this safe.

Remove only items whose program is missing, or items from an app you know you have deleted.
Leave anything from Apple alone.
If a name looks unfamiliar and its program still exists, do not remove it. Disable it first, see whether something stops working, and enable it again if it does.
Do not delete files from /System/Library or from any folder you cannot explain.

A leftover login item is a harmless loose end. Remove it when you notice it, with the steps above, and do not worry if you never do.