There was a time when the great majority of apps consisted of just an app bundle, created their own settings file in ~/Library/Preferences, and that was that. For various reasons, this became steadily more complicated, with some apps assembling arrays of files and folders in /Library/Application Support, and in recent years many apps have required helpers too. One common reason for this is that they need to perform certain functions with elevated privileges, such as root. To do that, they have become even more elaborate, with Login Items, property lists installed in folders like /Library/LaunchAgents, and more. This article explains how Ventura is trying to make things simpler again.
We spoke about this recently on Mac Power Users. While the new system attempts to give users more control over what’s happening on their Macs, I can’t help but think the UI for it is too confusing for most users:
