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Resolved Question

Lion "reopen windows"

Oct 31, 2011 10:43AM PDT

When I restart my computer I see a dialog box with a box checked to "Reopen windows when logging back in." Is there a way to have this box unchecked as the default?

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grobinson has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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This is from MacOS hints
Oct 31, 2011 3:42PM PDT

<span id="INSERTION_MARKER"> Open System preferences>General, and uncheck a box at the bottom "restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps".

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with one caveat
Oct 31, 2011 4:02PM PDT

That when logging out or shutting down, one needs to uncheck the box in the pop-up message. The previous answer applies to reopening apps within the same session, I guess. There is also a Terminal command, which I am not sure about.

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Lion "reopen windows"
Nov 1, 2011 4:57AM PDT

Thanks - I'm looking for a way to have the box in the pop up message unchecked by default.
When I shut down each day I run Cocktail and tell it so shut down the computer when it is finished. At the next startup - Cocktail now automatically launches --- I figure this has something to do with the checked pop up box at shutdown.

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From Apple discussions (Barney)
Nov 1, 2011 9:14AM PDT

The box in the General System Preferences should work for what you want. It appears it is not being set. I played around with it and it seemed to not set the preference every time, which may be what you are seeing.
First, open up your ~/Library/Preferencese/ByHost folder and delete the com.apple.loginwindow.<long alpha-numeric string>
Then, copy and paste this command into Terminal: defaults write com.apple.loginwindow TALLogoutSavesState 0
The file you deleted is the one that stores which apps and windows are open.The command directly writes the preference for saving the logout state. You can read the setting by using this command, although it should reflect the setting in the General System Prefs, now.defaults read com.apple.loginwindowLook for the line with TALLogoutSavesState. It should be 0, now. The checkbox in the shutdown dialog will remain checked, but you won't need to change it. It should ignore that since the main preference is set to not save state.

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Lion "reopen windows"
Nov 2, 2011 10:20AM PDT

Thanks for your response. I've been using Mac's since 1987 and never been confident in "tweaking" system settings. Hopefully Apple will see this discussion and add a fix to their normal preferences.

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I also hope so,
Nov 3, 2011 6:09AM PDT

although we are at the second update of Lion and nothing has been changed. Snow Leopard did not have this generally annoying thing.

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annoying to say the least
Nov 10, 2011 3:31AM PST

When my MacBook Pro becomes unresponsive and I have to force shutdown, it takes a year and a day to restart because it launches ALL the apps & windows & tabs I had open before the crash (which is more frequent since I installed Lion on a new MBP w/ i7 2.3, 4Gb, than it ever was on my old MBP running everything from Leopard to Lion).
I'm guessing that it's reading a file of the entire pre-crash state of the computer and is telling you "move along, nothing to see here." But it's frustrating to have to wait while it creates the very same state that may have contributed to the crash in the first place. I'm finding Lion very unstable unless I limit the number of apps that are open, even when the CPU-meter is below 15% which is generally what I see. The only heavy CPU usage has been in PSD and image apps.

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Answer
Latest update does this.
May 11, 2012 11:22AM PDT

The new update, OS X 7.4 changed the default for that dialog box. The box is now unchecked when I log out, restart, or shut down.

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(NT) At last!
May 12, 2012 12:16AM PDT