As of macOS Sonoma 14.0, on system startup and login launchd appears to ignore symbolic links that point to centrally-stored property list files. Using launchctl, this script can still explicitly load property list files using the symbolic links to them it creates, but they are not re-loaded by launchd on system startup and login.
By default, the script will now copy the centrally-stored property list files to the target directory instead of creating symbolic links to them.
Use the -l option to continue to create symbolic links in the target directory as before.
Create symbolic links locally to launchd property list files stored centrally in the cloud.
./launch-agents-symlinks.sh -h
./launch-agents-symlinks.sh [-a] [-l] -s "/full/path/to/source/directory" -t "/full/path/to/target/directory"
./launch-agents-symlinks.sh -a -s "$HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/LaunchAgents" -t "$HOME/Library/LaunchAgents"
launchd scans specific directories for property list (.plist) files to load. A brief, but informative overview of launchd can be found here.
A .plist file used by more than one machine needs to be duplicated on each machine. Managing duplicate copies of .plist files can prove cumbersome and time consuming. To make them easier to maintain, .plist files can be stored in a single central location accessible to all machines. The downside to this approach is .plist files stored outside of a few specific directories will be ignored by launchd.
One answer is to create symbolic links to these centrally-stored .plist files in the appropriate local directory on each machine.
The script does the following:
For all centrally-stored property list files:
- using the symbolic link in the local directory (if it exists), the property list file is unloaded by
launchctl - the symbolic link is deleted from the local directory
For centrally-stored property list files with no Disabled key or a Disabled key set to false:
- a new symbolic link is created in the local directory
- using the symbolic link, the property list file is loaded by
launchctl
For all symbolic links in the local directory:
- broken symbolic links - those that no longer point to an existing centrally-stored property list file - are deleted from the local directory
The following directories scanned by launchd for property list files are currently excluded. The script will not create symbolic links in these locations:
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/System/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons