Lingon x mac os

Lingon

An easy to use yet powerful app to run things automatically

Lingon X 8 released!

Run whatever you want, whenever you want

Lingon can start an app, run a script or a command whenever you want. You can schedule it to run at a specific time, regularly or when something special happens.

It can also make sure that an app or a script automatically restarts if it crashes.

Lingon is very easy to use yet extremely powerful. It is a fully featured launchd editor and has also many advanced features like running jobs as root and see the log for each job.

It can also monitor all jobs in the background and show a notification when something changes.

Download

Requires macOS 10.14.4 or later (works perfectly with Catalina and Big Sur)

Optimized for M1

Other versions are available for older versions of macOS

Free to download and try out, you can then choose to buy it or not.

Price: $14.99

Upgrade and site licenses are available

(Any license bought on or after 1 October 2020 works directly with Lingon X 8)

Lingon 3: $4.99 (with fewer features)

You pay once for this version and you can use and keep it forever. It is not a subscription.

New in Lingon X 8

Lingon X 8 is the best ever Lingon with many new features and improvements

• Use the new sidebar to just show the jobs you want to see
• Organize jobs with tags
• Can now set a custom icon for each job
• Create an app from a script to help with permissions
• Shows if a job is actually running
• Shows your cron jobs
• Simplified with a more elegant interface
• Improved how a new job is created and the info shown
• Optimized for macOS Big Sur
• Universal
• Many, many other improvements and bug fixes

Screenshots

Other versions

Two major versions

There are two major versions of Lingon available: Lingon X and Lingon 3.
Lingon X is not available in Mac App Store because of its rules limiting what an app can do.

Lingon X versions

macOS	Lingon X	Note
10.14.4+	Lingon X 8	Buy license
10.14.4+	Lingon X 7	Any new 10.14.4+ user should use Lingon X 8 instead
10.13+	Lingon X 6	See note just below
10.12	Lingon X 5	See note just below
10.11	Lingon X 4	See note just below

How can I get a license for an earlier version? You can only buy a license for the latest version but if you need a license for an earlier version you can get it by following these two steps:

1. First buy a license for the latest version from the store (and you can of course keep this license for when/if you upgrade your macOS)
2. Then send a mail to us with the receipt number and the version that you want the license for. We will then generate a license for you and send it to you.

Earlier versions do not include all features listed on this site.

Lingon 3

Lingon 3 requires macOS 10.9 or later.

How-to

You can do many things with Lingon X. Here are a few examples.

Create a new job

1. Choose New from the File menu
2. Give the job a unique name
3. Decide if you want to run the job only when you are logged in, for every user that is logged in or for the special “root” user
4. Choose if you want to run an app, a script or any command
5. Choose when you want the job to run and if you want it to restart automatically after a crash.
6. Click Save to load the job
7. If you want, you can then choose to change its settings

Edit an existing job

1. Select the job from the list
2. Make the changes you want and choose Save to reload the job

Delete an existing job

1. Select the job from the list
2. Choose Delete from the File menu

Settings

Here is some information about a few of the settings. For more information either hover over a control to see the tooltip or choose “man launchd.plist” from the Help menu.

Enabled If this is unchecked, it will stop the job and the job will not run until it is turned on again. For If you choose your own name it will only run when you are logged in. If you choose to run it for “Everyone” then it will run when any user is logged in. And if you choose to run it as “root” then it will load directly when you Mac starts and run as the privileged “root” user. Please note that you may need to authenticate as an administrator when using the last two settings. Name You need to give your job a unique name which no other job on the computer uses or it will not run properly. If you don’t give it a name Lingon will give it an automatic name. Run Write a path to an app or a script or write a command. The easiest way to get everything right is to use the action button and Choose. to select what you want to run. If you write a script please use the whole paths to any commands in the script. When Here you can choose when your job should run

• At startup and when saving: starts the job when you save it and when you login or start the computer
• Launch again if it crashes: keeps the job running at all time and restarts if it crashes. Use SuccessfulExit to change if it should restart automatically if you manually quit it.
• A volume is mounted: starts the job whenever a volume/disk is mounted
• Scheduled: here you set when it should run or if you want to want it to run repeatedly and with what interval (you can set multiple scheduled times by pressing the plus button)

The system in 10.15 Catalina and later only allows access to certain folders if you have explicitly given the running process access to those folders. This can be done in System Preferences — Security & Privacy — Privacy. Please note that sometimes you need to give the running binary or app access to those folders and it is always the system that runs your job and not Lingon X itself so it doesn’t help to give access to Lingon X.

When you try to run a script you can work around this problem by creating an app that runs that script. You can do that by opening the script with “Edit Script” in the File menu and then choose the “Build as App” button to save it as an app. Then double click on it in Finder to allow the system to ask for any permission and then use “Choose” next to Run in Lingon X and select the app.

I can’t update Lingon X, what is wrong? Because of security measures in macOS you have to move the app at least once before you can update it. So if for instance you downloaded the app to the Downloads folder on your Mac, quit the app and then just move it to the /Applications folder and then you can update it. Is there a demo version? For Lingon X you can download the app and you’ll have all the functionality except that you can’t save or delete a job until you buy a license. Lingon 3 does not have a demo version. How does the Log feature work? When you use the Log feature for an applicable job, Lingon X tries to filter the system logs for that job and show it to you. It can take a while to process the logs and make sure that you use a unique name for your job to make sure that it can find the appropriate log items. You can also change the time span that it should look for (longer time spans may not show all results for that period) and filter and sort the result. And you are not an administrator you will be asked to authenticate as one to be able to fetch the log. How does the Lingon’s own agent work and why do I get a notification? Lingon X includes an agent that can run in the background and restarts automatically after a restart. It monitors the folders where jobs can be saved and shows a notification (not when Lingon X is the current app) when a job is added, modified or deleted. You can click “Show” in the notification to show the job in Lingon X. See Preferences — Notifications how you can turn off the agent completely or for individual jobs. What is the com.peterborgapps.LingonX4Agent process?

com.peterborgapps.LingonX4Agent is the process name for the Lingon X Agent that runs in the background to show notifications when Lingon X is not running. It can be turned on and off in Preferences — Notifications.

What is launchd? Lingon lets you run things automatically by modifying configuration files for the system function called launchd. This means that you can also edit or remove jobs created by other apps. And the system handles running the jobs in the background so you don’t need to have Lingon open after you have saved your job. How can I stop a job? The easiest way to stop a job is to uncheck the Enabled checkbox. If you want to permanently delete the job you can do it with Delete in the File menu. Can I run a job as “root”? Yes, in Lingon X you can change “For” to “root”. In Lingon 3 there is no way to run it directly as root to comply with Mac App Store rules. Why doesn’t my job run?

Usually when a job doesn’t run it is because the underlying system process (launchd) doesn’t think that the job is correct or that it is too complex. One of the things that you can’t do is to use a pipe or use something like “exec” or “>”. But you can solve most problem easily when you have a really complex command by putting that command into a script and then run that script with Lingon.

You can also check to see that the whole paths to any commands are included and if you run a script that references or outputs files, that you include the whole path. And for any script that you run make sure that the script is an executable or is run with a command such as “/bin/sh”. And if your job uses relative paths you can set the WorkingDirectory under Paths so that all files can be found.

As a final possible solution you can use this in “Run”:

Will the job continue to run if I close Lingon? Yes. Does it work on the Server version of macOS? Yes. How can I quit an application? There isn’t any built-in support for quitting a normal application. But you can do it with an AppleScript command, for instance to quit Mail write this in Run: How can I buy a license? For the Lingon X version you can either use the web store directly or choose Purchase. from the Lingon X menu if you want to use the secure built-in store. You can buy Lingon 3 from the Mac App Store. How do I register the license? Choose License. from the Lingon X menu and input the exact values you received in the confirmation mail. Is VAT included in the EU prices? Yes. And if you are registered as a company in EU and has a valid VAT ID you can buy it without VAT. Why are some jobs gray? Jobs that aren’t enabled and will not run are shown in a different color. How can I revert to an old version of a job? Select a job and then choose Revert To in the File menu and then choose the date of the version that you want to revert to. This feature is path based so if you delete a job you can create a new file with the same name in the same folder and then choose an older version of the job. To delete all old revisions you can delete this file: How can I run a job after startup at the login window? Choose LoginWindow at the LimitLoadToSessionType under Limits and then it will run when the login window appears and there is then no need to run the job as a root daemon. What happens if my Mac is asleep? If your Mac is at sleep when a job is scheduled to run, it will run directly once your Mac has been turned on again. And if it should have run multiple times during the time it was asleep it will coalesce them so it will only run once. How does Info work? For launchd jobs Info shows the path to the file and the parts are clickable to open the folder in Finder. For jobs that are editable you can edit the plist directly if you want. And you can also choose to see the system’s own internal information about the job. For other kind of jobs it will show as much information about the job as possible. Is the PATH variable set? launchd doesn’t by default have the same PATH environment variable as for instance Terminal. Lingon X tries to help the user by writing the PATH environment variable to the EnvironmentVariables in the job. Lingon X only writes the PATH if it hasn’t already been set. The PATH that Lingon X writes is combined from /etc/paths, the files in /etc/paths.d, the default PATH used to launch all apps and then /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin are also added. You can turn off this behaviour in Preferences. How are “weekdays” and “weekends” defined? Lingon X uses your system settings to know what days a job should run when set it to run on weekdays or on weekends. How does Notes work? Lingon X makes it possible for you to save a note for each job, even system jobs that can’t normally be edited. Select a job and then under Notes click in the text field and the written text is saved automatically. The notes are saved in the home folder so they are accessible only for that user. To delete all notes, delete this file: How does Tags work? Lingon X makes it possible for you to tag jobs with a word and organize them to only show those jobs by clicking on the word under Tags in the sidebar. The tags are saved automatically and they are delimited by a space, comma or a semicolon. To delete all tags, delete this file: How can I run a job directly when the Mac boots? Create a new job and choose to run it for “root” and then the job will start directly when the Mac boots and no user needs to have logged in. What does the different view modes show?

• Grid — Lingon X tries to find and display the icon for what should run. If the job is disabled, its color will change and a disabled icon will show instead of the normal icon. If the job cannot be edited it will also show an extra icon.
• Tree — The jobs are listed hierarchically and also shows how many jobs each kind contains so that one can get an overview. To show all the jobs for a particular kind, one needs to expand that item.
• List — Lists all jobs and one can sort all the jobs with each column. One can also hide columns from the View menu or by ctrl-clicking on the table header.
• Timeline — It shows when the jobs that has a defined date will run (if a job has a repeat interval set it is shown at the top with its interval). The timeline shows dates up to one month from the current time.

What Login Items are shown?

Lingon X shows the login items that are shown in System Preferences — Users & Groups and these can be deleted but otherwise not modified.

Lingon X also tries to show apps from the Applications folder that include its own login items. These jobs cannot be deleted or turned off from Lingon X. You need to open its app to change that setting, if you select the login item in Lingon X you can choose Reveal in Finder from the File menu to open the app and change the setting.

How can I delete a key from a launchd plist?

You can delete a key by holding the Option key when unchecking a boolean value or when the key type is for instance a string, you do it by emptying the value completely.

Why is the background sometimes red in Run?

Lingon X tries by default to find and paths in Run and if one has made a mistake and that path is not available, the background will turn red. You can turn it off by quitting Lingon X and in the Terminal app run this command on one line:

How do I set a custom icon to a job? Select the job and drag the image to icon field in the editing part of the window or click on the icon in the editing part and paste a copied image from the pasteboard. You can delete a custom icon by selecting it and press Delete/Backspace on the keyboard. What does a “•” mean after a title in the editing part? It means that section has a setting changed from the default and one can see the setting by clicking on the expand button. What does “Status” mean? It shows if the job is running (and it then also shows its PID) or if the job is idle (perhaps if it is a job that just runs sometimes) or if the status is unknown (perhaps if the job is not enabled or the system can’t run the job). Can I edit system jobs?

Not by default, you can however see and study Apple’s system jobs (the ones in /System/Library/) by enabling System from the View menu.

In Lingon X 8 you can turn on a special mode to edit system jobs but please be aware that it is not recommended (please note that this doesn’t work at all in macOS 10.15 Catalina or later). Here is how you do it:

1. Turn on System in the View menu
2. Quit Lingon X and in the Terminal app run this command on one line:
3. Turn off SIP by following the instructions here

Compare

Lingon 3	Lingon X 8
Price	US$ 4.99	US$ 14.99
Upgrade price	US$ 9.99 (from any version bought after 1 January 2018)
Site license	US$ 99.99
Easy to use	✓	✓
Buy with Apple-ID	✓
Buy without Apple-ID	✓
Audited by Apple	✓
Notarized by Apple	✓
Run job as root	✓
Run job for many users	✓
Multiple dates	✓
Edit all launchd plist values	✓
Languages	English, Swedish (Svenska)	English, Arabic (عربى), Chinese Simplified (汉语), Chinese Traditional (臺灣華語), Danish (Dansk), Dutch (Nederlands), Finnish (Suomen), French (Français), German (Deutsche), Greek (Ελληνικά), Hebrew (עִברִית), Italian (Italiano), Japanese (日本語), Korean (한국어), Norwegian (Norsk), Portuguese (Português), Russian (Русский), Spanish (Español) and Swedish (Svenska)
Requirements	10.9 Mavericks or later	10.14.4 Mojave or later, see other versions for earlier versions
Optimized for Apple Silicon (M1)	✓	✓
EULA	Apple	Peter Borg Apps

Preferences (Lingon X)

Agent: Run — turn on or off the Lingon X Agent that runs all the time in the background to monitor the job folders for any changes even when Lingon X is not running. How the notification is presented is decided by the setting for Lingon X Agent in System Preferences — Notifications.

Under “All” you can turn on or off showing a notification for individual jobs. For instance, if you have one special job that you do not want to be shown a notification for. The list is based on the job’s name. If a job is disabled (gray) it because it is has been excluded by a prefix under “Exclude”.

Under “Exclude” you can with a prefix exclude many jobs. For instance, if you do not want to be shown a notification whenever one of Apple’s jobs is changed you can add “com.apple” to the list

Here you switch between different themes to change the font and colors used for instance when editing a plist. At the moment you cannot change the themes.

Advanced

• Internal helper tools: Show — decides whether or not to show the tools that Lingon X uses for the user to authenticate as an administrator

End User License Agreement for Lingon X

By using the licensed or demo version of Lingon X you agree to the following:

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