Daemons and agents on macOS
Published on March 13th, 2026
I was looking for a way to keep my MacBook awake with caffeinate, (which I found via James Brooks' blog) without having to initiate it myself every time the machine is rebooted. Enter: daemons (though technically agents, since daemons act as root or a specified user, agents act as the currently logged in user).
This led me to this repository, which piqued my curiosity about how to actually create one of those daemons/agents myself. After some searching I found launchd.info, a what looks to be very extensive explanation of daemons and agents on macOS using Launchd.