"At login" and "At engine launch" triggers not working

Questions & Suggestions
21

Thanks, I'll check that out.

22

The "When the Mac is unlocked" trigger does what I was trying to do. Don't know how I didn't see that to begin with.

Thanks for the help everyone!

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23

Well if the app "Session" doesn't open when you log in using macOS's auto-start feature, then it's fairly unlikely that KM can override that problem. If you have a problem outside KM, then the best idea would be to fix that problem first, then KM will probably start working.

I tried googling why apps won't open in macOS at login, and so far I don't have any ideas. May I suggest two things:

  1. Contact your app's developer and tell them their app won't launch at login using the macOS feature that starts apps at login;
  2. Create a message on Apple support forums asking why you have apps that won't launch at login using the macOS feature that starts apps at login.

In either case, don't mention KM to them because your problem exists without KM.

One more thing. MacOS has a log file. If your app is failing at login, there very well could be a message in the macOS log file explaining what the problem is. My coworkers have often said to me, "Have you checked the log file?" And usually I said, "no."

24

I'm not as skilled as others on this forum, but here's my takeā€”

I think you may really want to use the trigger "Engine Launch Trigger" if you want to launch at startup (login) . Additionally you may wish to add a few seconds pause before launching your app "Sessions".

As pointed out, make sure the the KM engine has access permissions (Full Disk), as pointed out earlier in this thread.

--> I don't think KM can launch anything until the KM engine is running.

I assume that the "At Login" trigger is designed to be used if you log out and then log in again, which assumes that the KM engine is already running. But I could be wrong about this.

25

macOS apps are shut down when logging out. If you sleep the computer, however, they are left running. Therefore, at login, the KM Engine has to launch.

26

Gee, yes, of course, I should have thought of that.

On my Mac, KM engine is rather late in loading at startup. So how does it launch apps at login if login occurs before the KM engine is running? Iā€™ve always used at ā€œengine launchā€ as a trigger with a slight pause.

Does the trigger ā€˜at loginā€ add the macro to the system login items or create a launch daemon or launch agent?

Whatā€™s a use case example of ā€˜at loginā€™ trigger and how does it differ from using ā€œat (km) engine launchā€?

27

Once youā€™re logged into you Mac you have total control of the KM engine insofar as you can stop and restart it as often as you like, so the KM engine launch can occur one or more times for any user session.

The at login trigger, however, will occur only once for any user session.

So if there are certain things you want to happen only when users log in then the login trigger is the way to go.

How you use this information is down to you but I use the login trigger to check that certain external disks are mounted for each user.

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28

I guess I can understand that someone would restart KM engine for whatever reason (like an upgrade in version) and they wouldn't want it to trigger the macro again in that circumstance. (which happened with my recent upgrade to 11.1)

So you're saying that the "at login" trigger would 'know' to launch a macro at startup even when the login condition occurs before the KM engine launches?

And for macros that you want to launch when you startup your Mac (at login), that is preferable to using "at Engine Launch"?

29

What I'm saying is the macros set to run at login are run when I login - whether that's at start of day when I'm booting up my Mac for the first time or if I'm logging into my Mac having logged-off earlier (but the Mac is still switched on). It takes a while for the KM engine to launch (and show itself in the menu bar) but it somehow knows that I've just logged in and so runs those at login macros.

I have never used the at launch trigger since there's nothing I need to happen when the KM engine launches...

30

Thanks for clarifying. Really appreciate it. (The distinction has been hard for me to wrap my head around.) I guess I rarely log out as a user. I either startup my computer or shut it down. And I prefer to run macros after everything else has loaded, including KM engine.)

I guess this has been what's been hard to understandā€”

but it somehow knows that I've just logged in and so runs those at login macros.

31

My guess is that the KM Engine is able to determine that is is being called by a macOS login script. And when it detects that, it "triggers" macros that use that trigger.

32

I guess so. Thanks.