Q: how to disable photos

Insert the card and let Photos open and show you the import pane. Then uncheck the box at the top:

You can also do this with Image Capture (in the Applications Folder)

It's a preference that you control. I have not tested it with a memory card, but I assume it works the same as for any digital camera.

In Photos:                                                 In Image Capture (makes the setting universal, across all apps):

Is there no way to simply turn off Photos permanently for all devices? 

Here's my (extremely frustrating) problem: I'm a photographer. I shoot on compact flash cards which I reformat on a regular. Every time I insert a reformatted card into the reader, Apple sees it as a new device... so even though I've unchecked "Open Photos for this device" countless times using the same card, PHOTOS STILL OPENS EVERY SINGLE TIME. I'm starting to think that Apple does these things just to drive people insane...

See my answer to your duplicate post - one post per problem is adaquate

LN

Thank you just as much too!  I needed that help today! 

Sincerely,

Neil Schwartz

I found this piece of code that you must write in the OS X console. As a photographer, I have the same problem and frustration, and it worked like a charm!

defaults write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool YES 

Please advise in OS X console under which heading must this be written in

That goes in the Terminal, not the Console.

Awesome Snippet!

-Steve

Does this disable Photos altogether, or just keep it from launching when you insert a card. I'd like to uninstall Photos altogether. I only want image files I'm actually working on on this macbook. It only has 120GB disk. I get out of space crashes if I use my photo library on this machine. Wish there was a way to limit which image files it keeps locally without deleting them from all over.

I feel like this is deja vu all over again. When they made iTunes automatically suck everything into itself, I spent some insane number of hours -- days and days and days, feeding each one of my CD's into it, one at a time. I tried to put the library on an accessory drive because my ibook disk didn't have enough room. Then at some point it decided to render everything I had tediously ripped in CD by CD, hundreds of them, unreadable. Serious trauma. I feel the same kind of thing coming now. If I delete enough image files off this drive so that I can use it, will it delete those photos from all my other devices, too? What happens when I copy some back to work on them? At least this time I know to make multiple copies of everything and put them where Photos can't get at them. Scary. I am beginning to think I need to have a machine that doesn't ever get on the internet, just so it doesn't delete my images or download too many of them. Either way, I"m screwed.

Remember you can have multiple Libraries, including one on an external and one on your internal too. So in your situation I would have a small current library on the internal and a larger archive on an external - then a back up on another external of course.

I'm not sure what problems you're referring to with iTunes, but I've had mine on externals for years with no issues. I would suspect that the problems you have are down to issues with disk formats or our old friend PBKAC

Note that neither of these apps do anything automatically, only what you tell them to do.

Photos cannot be deleted/removed to trash as it is part of OS.

I have found that the after I have inserted the command , Photos does not open when I insert my SD card

I'm not a programmer, but would love to put this code in, as I have the same issue, and "Photos" drives me batty(battier). Would anyone be willing to guide a semi-tech-savvy person through? THANKS!

This how hace done it

Open Launchpad

Click on Other

Click on Terminal and open terminal screen will look like below

Click on Shell top left hand corner

Click on new command

"defaults write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool YES"

Click on Shell top left hand corner whilst Terminal is still open

Click on use Setting as Default

Closed and restart your computer