How can I delay a specific program on startup?

Question

How to delay a program such as cairo-dock (No openGL) or Firefox?

Sometimes programs crash when started with other startup apps. I want programs to start 10 seconds late to avoid a crash.

see http://askubuntu.com/questions/22512/how-can-i-delay-dropbox-from-starting-but-not-disable-it — belacqua, Mar 02 '11 at 07:54

score 59 · Answer 1 · edited May 29 '19 at 14:13

59

Delaying autostart with inbuilt delay option

Note: Only works with desktop sessions that recognize the X-GNOME-Autostart-Delayparameter (e.g. Unity, Unity2D, GNOME). This will not work for LXDE, XFCE, KDE, etc.

With this solution there's no need for a script or sleep. Head to your autostart folder:

nautilus ~/.config/autostart

Find the .desktop file that corresponds with your application and open it in a text editor, e.g. gedit:

gedit ~/.config/autostart/application.desktop

Append the following line to the file:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=foo

where foo is the time in seconds you want to delay the application launch by, e.g.:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=60

Save the file, relog and you should see the effects.

edited May 29 '19 at 14:13

noraj

801

answered Oct 01 '12 at 07:08

Glutanimate

21,393

This works very well in both ubuntu 12.04 and in 12.10-development release using Gnome-shell 3.6 – bmbaker Oct 07 '12 at 18:01
2

Works in Ubuntu 18.04. – Ives Jul 03 '18 at 13:50
1

Is there a website or man page to find documentation for GNOME parameters? I searched in gnome-session man page but could not find them. – builder-7000 May 25 '20 at 17:15

score 26 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 10 '20 at 16:55

26

Try this:

bash -c "sleep 10 && firefox"

edited Feb 10 '20 at 16:55

pomsky

68,507

answered Mar 02 '11 at 10:03

lukasz

2,406

4

10x a lot, why does just sleep 10 && firefox not work? – user3804598 Jan 02 '18 at 20:43

score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 08:10

6

You could try to change the command to this:

sleep 10 && firefox

Some people say it works, some say it doesn't, if this is your case, and it does not work, you can try with:

xterm -e 'sleep 10 && firefox'

answered Mar 02 '11 at 08:10

sebikul

1,931

score 5 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 28 '12 at 17:29

5

I had to use this to get it to work for skype: sh -c "sleep 10 && skype &" in Ubuntu 12.04

edited Sep 28 '12 at 17:29

Anwar

76,649

answered Apr 29 '12 at 14:13

Shaun

73

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 21 '19 at 11:38

1

Make a startup command using https://askubuntu.com/a/48327/139749 . Then you can add delay by opening ~/.config/autostart and edit related file. You should add the following commands:

X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=10

answered Nov 21 '19 at 11:38

Huseyin

762

you're repeating the first answer. – maxadamo Dec 31 '19 at 11:24

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 10 '20 at 16:24

Solution by @Noraj works well for Ubuntu 18.04. Adding a couple of practical examples for Google Drive sync via Insync, and Synology cloud-drive. I don't want them to delay the startup.

For google-drive:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Insync
GenericName=Insync
Comment=Launch Insync
Icon=insync
Categories=Network;
Exec=insync start
TryExec=insync
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=60

And for cloud-drive:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Synology Drive Client
Comment=Synology Drive Client
Exec=synology-drive autostart
Icon=/opt/Synology/SynologyDrive/images/ico_72_cloud_station.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Network;FileTransfer;
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=75

Both files locate at $HOME/.config/autostart if you installed the applications and chose to make them start at login.

How can I delay a specific program on startup?

6 Answers6

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