SD Card not showing up in Finder Sidebar (other removable drives do) - Big Sur

Boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

adt113 wrote:

Same here. A temporary workaround is to rename the card from the desktop. Then eject and reinsert the card, and it will show up in the sidebar. There is a bug where Big Sur gets confused when a card has a default 'Untitled' name. I really hope this gets fixed in the next update as it has severely slowed down my workflow!

Also, When it is the first time mounting the drive, The USB Drive gets the default name 'NO NAME'. Happens when an SD Card is formatted as MS-DOS(FAT) when you didn't put a name in it.

Just a follow up. Big Sur Update 11.4 fixes this issue. Yeah!!

Big Sur 11.4 update (released yesterday) fixed this for me. Even an untitled SD card now shows in finders sidebar!

Stupid problem - here's how to fix. With disk inserted, open Disk Utility. You'll see the disk with no name. Right click to Rename the disk. Name it. Eject it (use Disk Utility to eject). Re-insert and it will show up in the Finder.

You do have all of these checkboxes checked in Finder's Sidebar preference pane, right?

If you do the the card doesn't show up in the sidebar boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists.  Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

Even with OS 11.1, problem still exist. I am a professional and importing images and videos from SD is a daily thing. It's annoying as ****. There are two workarounds, one already mentioned here, just rename the bloody card from desktop, or, reformat the card using Apple's disk utilities fixes it. But it will revert back if you re-format the card again in camera or other devices, strange. So I am changing my workflow at the moment by reformatting the card in Apple instead of in camera, and it works for now. I hope this gets fixed because I also find mounting and unmounting external drives very slow too, not as quick as Catalina.

I have had this problem and tried all the suggestions here. The problem was that there isn't a "devices" heading in the sidebar. There is a "Location" heading and if you put your cursor on that a tiny arrow head appears to the right of it pointing right to the main window, click the arrow and it points down (open) and reveals all the external devices.

Thanks - renaming the memory card on another machine fixed it for me.

Renaming the Untiled SD cards worked, as in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Qs65k8BlQ and commented. The problem is - my camera reformats the SD card everytime, so the work-around is short-lived. I hope Apple can fix this problem. Thanks.

Looks like SD cards named "Untitled" is a problem for Big Sur. It does the same for cards from both my Sony and Fuji cameras.

Until Apple gets their act together, here is a quick work-around: right click any disk under Locations in the Finder sidebar and select "Show in Enclosing Folder." The window that pops up has all external disks, including the wayward Untitled SD card.

Thank you very much. I renamed all my sd cards and now it's all good.

I have the same problem, SD Cards not showing in the sidebar, but have found an easy workaround for now. My Fuji camera renames my SD cards as Untitled when I format the card, which I do regularly. Renaming the card each time is a bit of a pain and doesn't work for my work flow.

My SD cards do show up in Finder if I choose to view My iMac, from the locations section. In Finder Preferences, General tab, I have set Finder to always open a new window showing My iMac, then my SD card is right there.

Hope this helps some of you.

The screenshot was for a card that was formatted in the camera, a Panasonic. I have another camera, a Canon which I formatted the card in the camera and it also shows in the sidebar.

Have you tried it in Safe Mode?