In MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan, applauncherd is usually started by upstart at boot, but it can be also started manually in the device by the /usr/bin/applauncherd script. Applauncherd does not daemonise itself by default. If daemonising is wanted, use --daemon command-line parameter.
In MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan, applauncherd can be started and stopped with the initctl command, for example: initctl stop xsession/applauncherd
There is a special boot mode that you can use to speed up device boots when applauncherd is used.
In boot mode, no booster caches are initialised and the booster respawn delay is set to zero to ensure quick booster restarts after launches.
To activate the boot mode, start applauncherd with --boot-mode. To enter normal mode, send SIGUSR1 Unix signal to the launcher.
You can also activate boot mode by sending SIGUSR2 Unix signal to the launcher.
Applauncherd logs to syslog. Additional debug messages and logging also to stdout can be enabled with --debug.