@Quinn My 'daemon' is a network monitoring tool that runs as a non-privileged, no-login user. The preference pane + privileged helper is intended to change the monitoring tool's configuration, start/stop, uninstall, status. Since my preference pane plugin is installed for all users (/Library/PreferencePanes) storing its persistent preference data in /Library/Preferences it requires elevated privileges when it writes to that location. Hence the idea to use SMJobBless, which - as you say - installs another daemon, aka a helper that will be authorized to obtain the privileges it needs to write to /Library/Preferences. As I understand it, the helper is just a lightweight daemon to perform a few dedicated tasks that require elevated privileges. I hope that clarifies it. In any case, there are many ways to skin that cat, but I believed that to be the most sensible. If you have another suggestion, I'm all ears. Thanks.