They provide an example XML profile 137498-An圜onnect.xml, which they claim should stop the app from opening at login: The accepted solution there is to set AutoConnectOnStart to false in the 'XML Profile' located at /opt/cisco/anyconnect/profile/. This same topic is discussed on the Cisco forum: An圜onnect Secure Mobility - Disable the automatic launch on login

This is the other, lower-level An圜onnect process(es) without any user interface and running as root that does the actual work: sudo launchctl kickstart -kp system/īe careful where you use sudo since some of the agents and daemons run in user space and some run in system space and different versions of macOS have different syntax and shells. For a friendlier documentation that does not assume you already know the difference between 'loading' versus 'starting' or between a 'daemon' vs a 'service' or an 'agent' go to first.Īs a bonus and slightly off-topic answer, here's a clean way to restart the An圜onnect daemon in case it gets stuck as it sometimes does. Launchctl is documented in (surprise) man launchctl but that's not for the faint of heart. Every mac user should have at least some vague idea of what launchctl does because it manages far more than An圜onnect: basically every process not manually started by the user. Launchctl is the equivalent of systemd on Linux or services.msc on Windows. Don't take the risk to miss those extra bits use the official and documented user interface. When there's a user interface it's very likely because it does more than just moving one file.

For example, trying to run sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/.plist results in an error 'Could not find specified service', whereas without the sudo it works. NB: be careful NOT to run sudo launchctl and NOT to run launchctl from a root terminal, because launchctl is user-dependent. Launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/.plist Launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/.plist Always prefer the user interface when there is one rather than messing with files directly: launchctl list | grep -i cisco

If it's not in 'Login Items' then it has to be in launchctl.

Cisco anyconnect for mac os catalina