Ventura shows my name instead of app name for login items

I think I asked this before, but wasn’t able to solve the problem. Under Ventura the login items show for all other apps the app name or the company name:

Instead of Mail Archiver the login items show my name Beatrix Willius. I asked on the Apple developer mailing list. But I didn’t get any answer.

Is this a me or a Xojo problem? What do other apps show that were made with Xojo? How can I change the information?

That looks like they’re showing Developer names there instead of apps.

So how do I change my developer name?

https://forum.xojo.com/t/launchagent-information-ventura/71230/2

As a private developer, you can not change your developer’s name if I remember correctly unless you have an official document or switch to an organisation account.

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But I can’t be the only private developer out there.

Looking at the data in the login items I can see a mixture of app names and company names.

SmallCubed is the company and MailSuite is the app. TG Pro is an app name and not the company.

I just added a login item for Find Any File and the notification shows the app name:

Screenshot 2022-10-27 at 15.13.07

But what shows in the control panel?

I guess it’s possible (likely?) that there’s a plist entry for that now.

Find Any File shows up as Find Any File:

I checked the plists of Carbon Copy Cloner, Find Any File and TG Pro. I don’t see anything special.

Right. Apps at the top, developers at the bottom.

It seems to me that Apple is pulling this information from the code signature.

IIRC and this was some time ago, to register a company with Apple, you need to have a certain kind of company and send the information to Apple and wait for them to “verify” it and allow you to use your company name.

We had to register Ohanaware as a Limited Company for Apple to accept the company name Ohanaware, otherwise they would just use my name, which I didn’t want as everywhere else we use the name Ohanaware.

It would make sense to see the company name there if Apple used the code signature. But this doesn’t explain why I see APP NAMES in the list.

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It appears to show the file name for items that are not code signed or cannot be verified, notice it says unidentified developer.

Enpass, Google Updater and Little Snitch are codesigned. There are more app names in the list.

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That list is all background tasks. The name probably comes from the task registration.

So how do I do that properly? My app writes a LaunchAgent for a helper app. But my name is not in the LaunchAgent.

All console tools show up as “unidentified developer”. Because - you know - nobody has ever used a console app before.

More information from Michael Tsai - Blog - Ventura’s “Open at Login” vs. “Allow in the Background” .

Some screenshots from Twitter show that it’s not just me or Xojo: https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1583914093437935616

I don’t understand what Eskimo is saying at https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/713830?answerId=726511022#726511022

I want to port my apps to the new logic but I am not quite sure how to do that. I don’t want my apps to appear under the “Allow in the Background” section but rather in the “Open at Login” section.

These are very different things:

  • Open at Login shows a list of login items, per the legacy kLSSharedFileListSessionLoginItems API. These items are always launched at login, and are intended to be under the control of the user.
  • Allow in the Background has different semantics. This is an allowlist. It doesn’t show what programs will be launched at login, it shows what programs are allowed to be launched at login [1].

You can see this with the SMLoginItemSetEnabled API:

  1. Enable your Service Management login item by calling SMLoginItemSetEnabled with true.
  2. The item shows up in the Settings list.
  3. Back in your app, disable your login item by calling SMLoginItemSetEnabled with false.
  4. The item still shows up in the list.

My understanding of what Quinn says is two things.

  1. Legacy means of launch on login, works as expected.
  2. Newer API, doesn’t mean that an app or service will launch on login, it means it has permission to do so.

As for what determines what gets displayed, AFAIK the specifics are not public information. You could burn a DTS if you want and ask Apple, what’s going on here. DTS are great, but don’t always expect an answer as they may NOT be able to give you answer if they’re not allowed to do so, you know for security and privacy, and privacy of the security.

Addendum: I also understand from point 2, that control over LoL is handled from within your application. However this means that the customer has to check and make sure that it is activated in your application, and has to check System Preferences Settings to make sure it has permission.

Burning a DTS sounds like a good idea. I did one 2 years ago. While I didn’t get an answer (I’m just a peon) I got the showstopper bug I had fixed in a timely manner.

I’ll also contact the developers I saw in the Twitter pics and make some Feedback thingies.

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You get two a year and they don’t roll over, so use 'em.

Quinn is one of the DTS engineers, and he’s often on the ADF, helping out where he can. He’s also on Twitter, but asks not to talk about work there, yet we still talk about things Apple and such, I just don’t bug him with questions on Twitter.