Apple

Can’t get launchd to run; been working on this for hours trying to troubleshoot

August 30, 2026

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I am running OSX 15.7.9. I am trying to use launchd to run rsync at 0100 every day. I understand it says launched.savesafarisession.plist instead of launchd.savesafarisession.plist but should still work.

safari_backup.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Force the script to write any inner terminal errors to a debug file
exec 2>>/tmp/script_internal.err
/usr/bin/rsync -a /Users/XXX/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Safari/ /Users/XXX/Safari

Ran chmod on .sh file

chmod +x /Users/XXX/Documents/safari_backup.sh

launched.savesafarisession.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<!-- generated by launched https://launched.zerowidth.com/plists/0GYhL6RMZ -->
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>launched.savesafarisession</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
    <string>/bin/sh</string>
    <string>/Users/XXX/scripts/safari_backup.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <array>
      <dict>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>1</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
      </dict>
    </array>
     <key>StandardOutPath</key>
            <string>/tmp/safari_backup.out</string>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
            <string>/tmp/safari_backup.err</string>
  </dict>
</plist>

I have added full disk access to the safari_backup.sh file and for extra measure, I added rsync

There are no errors in the log files, those files are empty
I can run rsync through the terminal with no problem and the files are copied to:

/Users/XXX/Safari

I loaded it with launchctl and tried to run with no luck

It seems to run but nothing is copied or shows up in the error logs