If you use an external monitor or a television as a secondary display for your Mac, you may have encountered a highly frustrating bug: the Apple TV app automatically launches itself every time you connect the HDMI or USB-C cable. In some cases, the Apple Music app or the Podcasts app might launch instead. This happens because macOS sometimes misinterprets the connection of a specific display or AV receiver as a multimedia remote control trigger.
Because there is no simple graphical toggle in System Settings to disable this behavior, you have to use a quick Terminal command to block the background process responsible for launching media apps upon hardware connection.
How to Stop Media Apps from Auto-Launching
The background process responsible for this behavior is called rcd (Remote Control Daemon). By disabling it, your Mac will stop trying to launch the Apple TV or Apple Music apps when it detects your external monitor.
- Open the Terminal app on your Mac. (You can find it by pressing Cmd + Space and typing “Terminal”).
- Copy and paste the following command exactly as written, then press Enter:
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
- If prompted, enter your Mac administrator password (your keystrokes will remain hidden as you type) and press Enter.
That’s it! You do not need to restart your computer. The next time you plug in your external display, the Apple TV app will remain closed.
How to Re-enable the Feature
Disabling the rcd daemon means that physical media keys (like the Play/Pause buttons on some older third-party keyboards or Bluetooth remotes) might stop working to launch Apple Music. If you decide you want this functionality back, you can re-enable the daemon using the following command:
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist
Press Enter, and your Mac’s default multimedia remote behavior will be instantly restored.