iTunes starts up whenever I connect my bluetooth headset

I know you wrote this over a year ago, but THANK YOU SO MUCH. Your terminal method is the only one that's worked to rid my life of iTunes. I can finally connect to my LG bluetooth headset without iTunes stealthily launching itself/blasting Adele's "Skyfall" (the first track in my library :P) at my face. You're my hero, applesmbissues!

Yep, I can confirm the above. The issue is NOT with iTunes. Rather, the issue is with a process called iTunesHelper that launches on startup. Preventing this process from starting at bootup (or even just manually killing it using Activity Monitor) will prevent iTunes from automatically launching when you connect a Bluetooth audio device. Thanks for the post above.

EDIT: Crap, never mind. I'm still having the same issue even with iTunesHelper disabled. It just takes 10 seconds longer....

thanks KiawahOC! this seems to have helped.

i can't believe apple would allow this to happen. my bluetooth headphones are connected to my phone. any time there is activity on it like a call or a text (which is all the time) iTunes pops up and BLARES random music in my ears.

Auto-start of the reviled iTunes is just too much to bear. If Jobs were still at the helm, heads would be rolling. I've tried all the fixes to no avail. It's just another marvelous 'feature' of the once mighty Mac OS....

So dumb.

I find it astonishing that this even occurs... It annoys the **** out of me sitting with a headset, and taking it on and off because life around requires my attention. And every time I need to close iTunes after it has started to play the first song in my library.

At least there should be a simple box/switchto make this behaviour optional.

This question was first posted in 2010, it is now less than a month from 2018 and this remains an issue.

In nearly 8 years the only "solutions" are hacky workarounds, that is just sad.

We are talking about a simple ON/OFF switch for auto play here! I guess it takes courage to ignore such a simple fix for so long.

My bluetooth headphones have this great feature where when I take them off, it automatically pauses the media being played and when you put them back on it resumes. On my Windows PC and Android Phone this works exactly as you'd expect, no configuration needed.

BUT, on this awesome MacBook Pro, which I am forced to use for work, every time I decide to take my head phones off and then put them back on iTunes launches and starts playing music.

I'm an Apple customer since 1982. This is really bad. Shameful.

Users need to be able to disable the inane functionality of a blutooth change conection launching iTunes and interrupting the current audio.

Suppose that the current audio was really important? But Apple thinks a blutooth connection warrants launching iTunes, interrupting the current audio and making it really difficult to recover.

Recovery requires quitting iTunes and then shutting down and re-launching whatever app was playing audio before being so rudely interrupted. A user who is not well versed in recovering from the horrible effects of this functionality will likely be very confused (e.g. "What happened to the sound? what is this new window that has also rudely stolen focus after opening automagically?") and take several minutes to recover.

Do any Apple personnel understand how rude and stupid this functionality is?

Do you realize how bad it looks to not only have such rude and stupid functionality, but you're also going to great lengths to prevent people from alleviating their suffering from such inane functionality.

I couldn't agree with this comment more. There are so many arcane aspects of modern Apple OS that the whole platform is reduced to nearly useless. And my house and my business is filled with Apple products.

How the mighty have fallen.

If you find a solution to this most annoying problem, please let the world know. Other solutions to well documented problems would be welcomed too.

yep, same with "Avalon BT". Sometimes i wish to simply delete itunes...

I use it as headphones, not as headset. But i want to listen to youtube or soundcloud and NOT to itunes!

Same issue with my Jabra Halo and LG HBM-520

Same issue with Rocketfish RF-MAB2

Having same issue here too on MBP 2011 with Lion. I would like to fix this. It is so much annoying.

Same for me, with Artic P311 Headset. Please fix it...