Spaces in App Names Just Bit Me

Published under Mango 5Star, Jul 12, 2019

One of the necessary dA 5Star's features is to launch at login. While users can add it to login items in System Preferences, automatic launch-at-login with opt-out would be much more convenient and discoverable.

To do that with a macOS App Store app, Tim Schröder wrote a great tutorial on this topic.

The idea is to use SMLoginItemSetEnabled with a bundled helper app. The helper app can be launched at login, the helper can in turn launch your main app.

So I followed the instructions. But I just couldn't get it to work. After a few hours I gave in: I downloaded the example Xcode project. It works! So there must be something wrong with my setup.

After a few more hours of comparing the differences between the sample app and my app, I finally discovered what the issue is. At this point you already guessed from this post's title. Yes that's because I named my helper dA 5Star Helper, and it contains spaces. I renamed to simply Launcher and it solved the mystery.

Ouch.