Q: PERMANENTLY Prevent Photos from Opening Automatically

No

Tell Apple your desires - https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

LN

Thanks! I replied to the link above as well! I REALLY REALLY Hope this gets fixed soon. Also I believe the issue of auto opening the Photos app and automatically loading thumbnails off of the device is a privacy issue. What if you are in a public setting when you plugin your phone for power and the Photos app displays all of your photos for the rest of the world to see? NOT Cool! There is a similar problem with the Image Capture app doing this as well. Allow the user to select the device first rather than blatantly auto show your images to the rest of the world. Thanks for making great products Apple and I truly look forward to seeing this privacy issue resolved fix soon!

you are welcome

LN

Agreed this is tiresome but the means to preventing Photos opening isn't Photos it's in Image Capture.

If connecting causes Photos to launch, launch Image Capture and select in turn each device listed and the carat in the bottom left corner

then select "No Application".

Quitting Image Capture thereafter saves the settings. I've found that this setting is retained even after reformatting of SD cards etc.

Hope this helps.

I can get this to work on Mac OS 10.10.4 but not on 10.10.5. Has anyone been able to get this to work in 10.10.5? None of the options work. I've unchecked the option under the Import tab in Photos.app which reads: Open Photos for This Device and then gone into Image Capture and clicked the little arrow button in the bottom left corner and changed the default app. I have tried all other suggestions on the forums including using Rubicon RCDefaultApp and no matter what I try nothing works in 10.10.5 - Can someone else see if this works please.

I discovered my issue. In an effort to prevent apps from auto launching in the past I had setup a locked ByHost file in place of the ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost folder and apparently that is where this .plist is created that keeps track of what app to launch when an SD card is inserted: com.apple.ImageCapture2.E7131CCE-C735-5957-A61A-540DFA5C184E.plist - The E7131CCE-C735-5957-A61A-540DFA5C184E is the ID of the SD card.

As soon as I deleted my ByHost locked file and let the OS create the folder again and then the file mentioned above within it - The settings were retained and now I can choose whatever launches on SD card insert.

Just a tip: It seems as if RCDefaultApp has the option to default all cameras/SD cards to open with a certain app but I have not tried this to see if it works or if we have to do it on an individual camera/SD card basis.

The next project is to figure out how to get AutoImporter to save all images automatically (no matter what SD card is inserted) onto a network volume. But that is for a different thread.

For individuals trying to just stop Photos.app from launching on their own computer just follow this:

https://captureintegration.com/quick-tip-stop-yosemites-photos-from-opening/

I am going to reply once more. My environment is a network environment with about 20 iMacs connected to one MacPro with Server all MacOS 10.9+

I was able to finally figure out how to get AutoImporter.app or another app of my choice to open instead of Photos.app but since we are on a network using opendirectory I was able to use Workgroup Manager. I imagine you could do this same thing but instead of opening the network directory you could open the local directory and add this preference for local users group instead. I had to have the following software Plist Edit Pro, Workgroup Manager, RC Default App in order to accomplish this.

Within the ByHost directory is a preference file that gets generated: com.apple.ImageCapture2.A3606F44-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXX.plist (I x'd out my machine ID)

The above file can contain two different types of entries 1 type is specific to an SD card or camera, the other type is generic to all devices. RC Default creates the entry that will work on all devices. Photos and Image Capture will only allow you do setup your system per SD card which is terrible because that means that every SD card you stick in or even after you format an SD card you have to set it up again to not automatically launch Photos.app

Another consideration of the preference file above is that since it has that long machine ID on the end you would have to rename it with your machine ID when you copied it into your own ByHosts folder because it will not work otherwise. Thats why I mentioned Workgroup Manager, it has the option to apply a ByHosts preference file like the one above to an entire group and have it apply to anyone who logs in.

Example of the key inside the preference file that is per device:

F615FDFB-8079-3BE8-ADE9-4A312E1AB04E

ICADeviceTypeKey                              String               ICADeviceTypeCamera

autolaunchApplicationPath                    String               /System/Library/Image Capture/Support/Application/AutoImporter.app

Example of the key inside the preference file that will affect every sd card or camera plugged in:

HotPlugActionPath                         String               /System/Library/Image Capture/Support/Application/AutoImporter.app

As long as you do not uncheck the box under the import tab of Photos.app for each device and just go into RC Default App and just switch the Camera entry to a different app the HotPlugActionPath key above gets generated.

Now my issue is that I have setup an applescript to launch which warns my users that their pictures will be imported and then launches AutoImporter.app but the problem is that if I just manually launch it for some reason it will not Import the photos.

Can someone else try this please? If you have the Camera app in RC Default App set to none and so when you insert an SD card it does nothing and then you manually launch AutoImporter.app does it download your photos? It appears that for some reason it has to be triggered by the HotPlugActionPath key or something to work?

None of these tips seem to work with El Capitan ...

The Image Capture method works in El Cap for me. It's tedious going through it for each device or memory card, but it holds without a problem.

Does it work for SD and CF cards? that's the issue I have, each time I format it in the camera it becomes  "new" device so photos will auto open when it is inserted.

I'm a professional photographer that often edits for multiple other photographers while on a tight deadline. Having Photos open each and every time a new card is mounted on my machine is crazy. It's not practical to disable this auto launch feature for each and every device.

I'm hopeful that this is "fixed" in the very near future. I'm a photographer, not a programer. I don't want to have to jump through a dozen hoops, use Terminal, or have to meticulously sift through various folders to remove an application that I have no need to use.

We're lucky Chevy doesn't follow Apple's lead on this. Else we'd get in our car and the gas pedal would just automatically be pressed down. Bad example? Yeah, probably.