In Mac OS X, you can have your own set of applications to automatically start up when you log in to your computer. These applications are called login items. (For the Mac OS 9 old-timers, think Startup Items in days gone by.) To set them, open System Preferences and click the Login Items icon. Then click Add to navigate to the desired application, select it, and then click Add again. Note that items in the list are launched in order — if something needs to run before something else, you can drag the item entries into any sequence.

To launch an item in hidden mode — which may or may not display it in the Dock, depending on the application itself — click the list entry for the desired item and enable its Hide check box.