Config: Run shell script on login

Sometimes, I got frustrated with the fact that my SSH keys were cleared from agents after rebooting. As a result, I had to manually add those keys to agents every time my computer restarted (although it’s not occasional)… It’s best to automate such tasks - I thought. So, I asked “how to run a shell script on login?”. And here are some solutions.

Option 1: Automator

• Open Automator. Choose Application from the templates.
• Choose Run Shell Script from the action list.
• Paste your code there (see the figure below). For convenience, I launch another script which I could easily open and edit.
• Save the application.
• Open System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items. Then, add the application you have just created.

Option 2: Daemons

• Create a plist file in ~/Library/LaunchAgents (ex. com.thuyen.loginscript.plist):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
	<dict>
		<key>Label</key>
		<string>com.thuyen.loginscript</string>
		<key>ProgramArguments</key>
		<array><string>/Users/thuyentrinh/scripts/on_login.sh</string></array>
		<key>RunAtLoad</key>
		<true/>
	</dict>
</plist>

🔖 Note: For some reasons, the plist does not work with the executable path like ~/scripts/on_login.sh (~ for HOME directory). Explicit path /Users/thuyentrinh/scripts/on_login.sh solves the problems… My MacOS is 10.13; maybe that matters 🙄. I did not test it in earlier MacOS versions.

• Load the daemon:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.thuyen.loginscript.plist

• You could verify if the daemon is loaded by listing out services

launchctl list | grep loginscript

Reference

1. Launch shell script silently at login
2. Daemons and Services Programming Guide
3. Stackoverflow thread: Running script upon login mac