How to get a service working upon launch A while ago, I wrote a few services and assigned them to key combinations. The problem is, even though services are under application's File menu item, I have to invoke it manually the first time, then I can use the key combination. Is there a way to be able use services when you first launch the application? I looked at this answer, but I'd rather use a 3rd party application only if I absolutely have to.
You can make this work with launchd. This requires two steps: First creating a script that invokes your service(s), and second creating a LaunchAgent plist file that will call the script at launch.

First step: Creating a script that invokes your service(s)


Write a text file with the following content, where ~/Library/Services/myservice.workflow points to the service you want to start (if you want to start more than one service, repeat the second line pointing to the different services):

#!/bin/bash
automator ~/Library/Services/myservice.workflow

Save the file, e.g. as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/me.myname.launchmyservice.sh
Make it executable by issuing the following command in the Terminal:

chmod u+x ~/Library/LaunchAgents/me.myname.launchmyservice.sh



Second step: Creating a LaunchAgent plist that calls the script


Write a text file with the following content. You need to adapt the string /Users/myusername/Library/LaunchAgents/me.myname.launchmyservice.sh so it points to the script created in the first step. You cannot use a relative path with ~.

&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
&lt;!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"&gt;
&lt;plist version="1.0"&gt;
&lt;dict&gt;
  &lt;key&gt;Label&lt;/key&gt;
  &lt;string&gt;me.myname.launchmyservice&lt;/string&gt;
  &lt;key&gt;ProgramArguments&lt;/key&gt;
  &lt;array&gt;
    &lt;string&gt;/Users/myusername/Library/LaunchAgents/me.myname.launchmyservice.sh&lt;/string&gt;
  &lt;/array&gt;
  &lt;key&gt;RunAtLoad&lt;/key&gt;
  &lt;true/&gt;
&lt;/dict&gt;
&lt;/plist&gt;

Save the text file to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/me.myname.update-desktop-from-webcam.plist – the name should match the "Label" key in the file.
Load it by issuing the following command:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/me.myname.update-desktop-from-webcam.plist