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I am trying to figure out how many launch agents are loaded right now using following command the it

find /System/Library/Launch* /Library/Launch* ~/Library/Launch* -name '*.plist' -exec sh -c '/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print Label" {} && echo {}' ';' | grep -wf <(launchctl list | grep -o "\S\+\..*$") -A1

grep -B 1 -A 1 "active count = 1$" <<< "$(launchctl dumpstate)"

but its not listed the one I am looking for. is it correct?

Gordon Davisson
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Vikram Sinha
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2 Answers2

7

Using launchctl you can list all the running agents and daemons like such:

launchctl list

and

sudo launchctl list

please note that the two are different commands. Oddly enough, running sudo launchutil list prints out the root daemons, and only the root deamons.

If you are running the commands in the terminal you will want to run the non-sudo version first, because if you don't, the sudo version will create a root session which will force version #1 to have root privileges anyways!

If you would like to find the file path to such an agent or daemon, this may help.

Edit:

Okay, I don't know how I missed the word "unloaded" in the giant title in your question but... here are the directories that daemons/agents like to hide in (copied from the man page of launchctl):

FILES
 ~/Library/LaunchAgents         Per-user agents provided by the user.
 /Library/LaunchAgents          Per-user agents provided by the administrator.
 /Library/LaunchDaemons         System wide daemons provided by the administrator.
 /System/Library/LaunchAgents   OS X Per-user agents.
 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons  OS X System wide daemons.
Community
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Samuel-IH
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    Running the non-sudo version BEFORE of the sudoed version is CRUCIAL. If not invoked in this order, you don't get your non-sudoed ones. I was turning crazy, and managed to list the one I was looking for once I was aware of this. – Isaac Jul 15 '20 at 07:19
  • It might be useful to add `| grep -v com.apple` to hide system entries. – Lucas Fais Jul 26 '23 at 14:57
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I had your same question and this article was super helpful. I suggest reading through it, but here's a relevant snippet:

While it’s not a simple matter for users to enumerate all the Login Items, admins can do so with a little extra work by parsing the following file, if it exists: ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/com.apple.backgroundtaskmanagementagent/backgrounditems.btm

Parsing that file is more complicated than opening it with your favorite editor. The article links to a paste bin, but this github repo is a one-stop shop. Still, the article will help a lot.

Jeremy Caney
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gills711
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