Kant, our Technical Consultant, is the brain behind our new weekly topic, Switch Mac OS X Smart Tips. We have caught him in action at our CoffeeMUG sessions before, and you can now find him on our blog.

Have you noticed that you have applications that launch automatically every time you login to your Mac?

Applications that launch automatically during login are very useful, as they take away the hassle of the user manually launching the applications that they might be using every time they login to their Macs.

However, there are times where speed is essential, and thus having multiple applications launching together at the same time during login is extremely irritating to a user.

Of course, there may be users who may wish that certain applications will launch automatically without user intervention.

You can control how applications are launched automatically by accessing the “Accounts” panel of “System Preference” on your Mac.

In there, select the currently active user under “My Account” at the top of the left column, and select “Login Items” at the bar at the right.

The following is a simple example of what you might see in the “Login Items” panel. Admittedly, it is a bit extreme, since on login, Microsoft Messenger, Firefox, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype, Adium, Dashboard, iCal, and Mail will launch. This setup, while convenient, would mean a user will have to wait while the applications are launched at login.

To modify the “Login Items” list of items that opens at login, you can add or remove them using the “plus (+)” or “minus (-)” buttons near the bottom left of the list.

You can also “hide” the items that opens at login by ticking the checkbox next to the items name. This means that any items in the list that is “checked” will not be displayed at login. This is useful to avoid having too many windows cluttering the display.

The following is an example of an empty “Login Items” list. In this case, nothing will be opened at login.

Also, as mentioned earlier, you can also have folders or files opened at login. You can add them the same way as applications. Folder or files added to the “Login Items” list will open the next time the user logins.

Alternatively, you can also control whether an application launches at login by right clicking the application icon at the dock, and select the “Open at Login” option in the menu that appears. A “Tick” will appear showing that this application will launch at login. To stop it from launching, right click on the application icon on the dock, and in the menu that appears, click on the “Open at Login” option again. This will remove the “Tick”.

So go ahead, try out this week’s Switch Mac OS X Smart Tips - Managing “Login Items”. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.