Endless "Background Items Added" notifications

ToothFairy
,
1

I just ran the latest security update on my Macs to update them to macOS 13.2.1. After restart, one of them is showing an endless stream of “Background Items Added” notifications about ToothFairy. (The other Mac doesn’t have this issue.) A new notification pops up about every 10 seconds:

CleanShot 2023-02-15 at 12.19.37
CleanShot 2023-02-15 at 12.19.37698×1964 348 KB

I’m guessing this bug is on the macOS side rather than ToothFairy, as the whole security controls portion of macOS feels incredibly flakey and poorly designed. (I hate these particular notifications because they’re a) misleading in most cases and b) don’t tell you enough to make an informed decision.)

I got the notifications to stop by uninstalling ToothFairy. Obviously not ideal. I’ll try some combination of restarting & reinstalling, and hopefully it won’t reoccur.

Just wanted to give a heads up in case anyone else experiences this.

2

Yes, this is caused by a bug in macOS. From what I’ve seen, often times it shows these notifications because of changes that a different app has made, i.e. App A changes its login item but the notification says App B. Reinstalling the app and doing a safe boot may help. It may also help to enter this command in Terminal:

sfltool resetbtm

and then restart.