macOS Daemonology: Communicate with Daemons, Agents, and Helpers Through XPC

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021

V. VashurkinmacOS Daemonologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7277-0_8

8. User Agents

Volodymyr Vashurkin¹  

(1)

Dnipro, Ukraine

 

In this chapter, we’ll discuss the specifics of user agents, which are user background processes.

User Agent Specifics

User agents have the following attributes:

• Run as a specific user

• Usually multiple instances in the system (a process for one user)

• Stand-alone and independent

• Any executable (command line, bundle, or script)

Naming Conventions

User agents in macOS have their own naming conventions.

• CapitalCamelCase

• The word Agent at the end

• Examples: AirPlayUIAgent, AMPArtworkAgent, ContextStoreAgent, KernelEventAgent

When to Use

Lots of modern ...