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Delay start-up items to make them quicker  14

I don’t know about you, but whenever I start/restart my Mac I hate the way that, when it’s got to the desktop, it tries to launch all the start-up items at the same time and so your hard-drive is whirring like mad, hopping back and forth and splitting its time between each app. Some of my menu bar items that launch at start-up are standard apps, i.e. non-system stuff, so I tried altering the way they launch by delaying them for a certain time to allow other stuff to start first.

The first thing to do was to identify which of my login apps could be launched manually. Taking my menu bar as an example:

1. Proxi;
2. iScrobbler;
3. AirClick;
4. Synergy;
5. Salling Clicker;
6. MenuCalendarClock;
7. AppleScript menu;
8. Bluetooth;
9. AirPort;
10. System volume;
11. Fast user switch;
12. Spotlight;

Numbers 7 to 12 are system menu bar items and numbers 4 and 5 are System Preferences panes - none of these, as far as I know, can be launched individually. Number 6 automatically adds itself to the System Preferences -> Account -> Login Items list when it’s launched so we can forget that one, too.

This leaves us with numbers 1, 2 and 3, all of which can be started manually and told not to start at login … which is what we need to do next: this is either done within the app’s preferences (usually a Start at login check-box or something similar) or by deleting its entry in the System Preferences -> Account -> Login Items list.

I figured I could use Automator to do what I wanted but, for those of your who prefer it, I also did it using AppleScript.

Automator method

This is a relatively easy workflow to create - the Pause action can be found in the Automator library and the Launch Application action in the Finder library:

Change the app names to suit your set-up and experiment with the delays that work best for you - presumably newer and faster Macs than my iMac G4 will be more suited to shorter delays.

Select File -> Save As…, give it a suitable name and location and make sure you change the File Format: to application.

AppleScript method

Fire up Script Editor (usually located in Applications -> AppleScript) and enter something like:

delay 20
tell application "AirClick"
  launch
end tell
delay 2
tell application "iScrobbler"
  launch
end tell
delay 2
tell application "Proxi"
  launch
end tell

The delay command tells it to wait for that many seconds and the tell application "..." / launch / end tell launches the specified app - pretty simple stuff.

Change the app names to suit your set-up and experiment with the delays that work best for you - presumably newer and faster Macs than my iMac G4 will be more suited to shorter delays.

Select File -> Save As…, give it a suitable name and location and make sure you change the File Format: to application.

Starting the, erm, delayed start

Finally we need to add our workflow or script to our login items: go to System Preferences -> Account -> Login Items, click the ‘+’ button, navigate to wherever you saved your workflow or script, select it and click Add.

And now you can restart your Mac to try it out.

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