Automator apps as Login Items not working

Question

I have two automator built applications which I want to run when a user logs in. I tried adding them to the Login Items of the user. But when I log that user in, both automator apps fail to run.

If I run the apps by double clicking them they both work just fine. If I add just one of the apps (tried this with both) to the Login Items, they run successfully on the user logging in.

Looking at the Activity Monitor after logging in with both set in Login Items I can see that both apps have been started and appear in the list. As both the apps are designed to perform a maintenance function and then exit they should not be there.

Also present in the list of running apps is "Automator Launcher". If I kill this app, then both of my apps run and exit as normal.

When just running a single app on login the "Automator Launcher" does not appear in the list.

My current guess is that running two apps at the same time is causing the Automator Launcher to hang and thereby also hanging the apps.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Answer 1

I confirmed that the same thing occurs on my system. One Automator applet runs perfectly, two or more seem to result in nothing happening.

The workaround I found was to make an Automator application called "Login Items", and have this Automator application run the others (by using the "Run Workflow" action to call each one). Testing this it seemed to work perfectly.

Alternately you could combine the actions of each Automator application into a single long Automator application, but I prefer the granularity the first option provides.