Disable OSX Services

Services

Before you connect to the Internet, you may wish to disable some Apple services which phone home to Apple (https://github.com/fix-macosx/yosemite-phone-home).

Services on OS X are managed by launchd. See http://launchd.info/, as well as Apple's Daemons and Services Programming Guide and Technical Note TN2083

Here are the basics:

• Use launchctl list to view loaded user agents
• Use sudo launchctl list to view loaded system daemons
• Specify the service name to examine it, e.g. launchctl list com.apple.Maps.mapspushd
• Use defaults read to examine job plists in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and /System/Library/LaunchAgents
• Use man, strings and Google to learn about what the agent/daemon runs

For example, to learn what a system launch daemon or agent does, start with

defaults read /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.apsd.plist

Look at the ProgramArguments section to see which binary is run, in this case apsd. To find more information about that, look at the man page with man apsd

If you're not interested in Apple Push Notifications, disable the service

sudo launchctl unload -w \
  /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.apsd.plist

Here's an example of disabling a bunch of user launch agents,

function disable_agent {
  echo "Disabling ${1}"
  launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/${1}.plist
}

disable_agent com.apple.AddressBook.SourceSync
disable_agent com.apple.AirPlayUIAgent
disable_agent com.apple.AOSHeartbeat
disable_agent com.apple.AOSPushRelay
disable_agent com.apple.bird
disable_agent com.apple.CalendarAgent
disable_agent com.apple.CallHistoryPluginHelper
disable_agent com.apple.CallHistorySyncHelper
disable_agent com.apple.cloudd
disable_agent com.apple.cloudfamilyrestrictionsd-mac
disable_agent com.apple.cloudpaird
disable_agent com.apple.cloudphotosd
disable_agent com.apple.CoreLocationAgent
disable_agent com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication
disable_agent com.apple.EscrowSecurityAlert
disable_agent com.apple.findmymacmessenger
disable_agent com.apple.gamed
disable_agent com.apple.helpd
disable_agent com.apple.icloud.fmfd
disable_agent com.apple.idsremoteurlconnectionagent
disable_agent com.apple.imagent
disable_agent com.apple.IMLoggingAgent
disable_agent com.apple.locationmenu
disable_agent com.apple.notificationcenterui
disable_agent com.apple.pbs
disable_agent com.apple.rtcreportingd
disable_agent com.apple.SafariCloudHistoryPushAgent
disable_agent com.apple.safaridavclient
disable_agent com.apple.SafariNotificationAgent
disable_agent com.apple.security.cloudkeychainproxy
disable_agent com.apple.SocialPushAgent
disable_agent com.apple.syncdefaultsd
disable_agent com.apple.telephonyutilities.callservicesd

And the same for system launch daemons,

function disable_daemon {
  echo "Disabling ${1}"
  sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/${1}.plist
}

disable_daemon com.apple.apsd
disable_daemon com.apple.AssetCacheLocatorService
disable_daemon com.apple.awacsd
disable_daemon com.apple.awdd
disable_daemon com.apple.CrashReporterSupportHelper
disable_daemon com.apple.GameController.gamecontrollerd
disable_daemon com.apple.SubmitDiagInfo
disable_daemon com.apple.TMCacheDelete

Be careful about disabling any services you don't understand, as it may render your system unbootable.