Troubleshooting the launch of local user XPC Launch Agent — by ktam and wjens on Apple Developer Forums

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A 2015 thread with practical launchd debugging: a replier found that using ~ in ProgramArguments stopped the agent from starting while a full path worked, that the path should point at the executable inside the bundle, and the thread shows inspecting state with launchctl list, print and blame. Aimed at XPC agents, and the home-directory problem never got a firm root cause.

Quick steps

launchctl print gui/<uid>/<label>
launchctl blame gui/<uid>/<label>

Paraphrased from the source. Menus can differ by version, so check the original for full details.

Read the full thread on developer.apple.com

Source: Troubleshooting the launch of local user XPC Launch Agent by ktam and wjens on Apple Developer Forums. Licence: Link only (©).

Source reviewed: 2026-11-02
Link checked: 2026-11-02
Tested hands-on: Not by Oddbyte.Me

launchdlaunchctldebuggingmacos

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