iMac won't read SD cards

Thank you for the re-boot suggestion. It solved the issue!

I just had this problem on my iMac. Finder got stuck just trying to read the card, but then came up with an error that I didn't have permission. I did a force quit on Finder and relaunched it. Card was then available to me to access and copy from.

A similar thing happened the other day, but without the permission error. Not sure if the card is going or my iMac.

Anyway, hope that helps.

I'm getting this too - I plug the SD card into the side of a 2009 iMac, and nothing happens. I tried rebooting and the SD card appeared in finder for about 30 seconds before suddenly disappearing, and I got the alert that it had been removed incorrectly (it hadn't been touched). I'm not sure when this changed. Since I tend to only use the camera while traveling, and have been staying home lately, I don't think I've tried to plug the SD card in since summer 2015.

Now I've tried plugging in the camera itself. It's appearing in the "Import" line in the Photos sidebar, but none of the pictures actually on the SD card are appearing in Photos. Nor does the camera (Canon PowerShot SX260) appear when I open "Import" from the Photos menu.

If I open Image Capture, it doesn't seem to see the camera.

I've tried to repeatedly insert and remove the SD card, but it hasn't yet made a difference.

So, um, does Apple now only want me to use an iPhone for photos?

Updating what I just posted: a USB card reader didn't work either. I tried another SD card directly in the iMac's SD card slot, and that appeared - so I ejected that one, and put back in the one that was giving me trouble, and now it appeared. So who knows. Try different SD cards and go back to the one you want?!

Thank yooooooou! This absolutely worked after trying all else!

Hi, I have suffering from this problem for long.

I have trivial solution. I am sure you have the SD card that belongs to some Camera. What you can do is connect the USB cord from the Camera itself to the Mac.

This should work and there are multiple places where the Camera will be detected like Image Capture, iPhoto, Photos, Aperture.

I have Canon EOS 1100D and my SD card was not readable by Mac from the SD card slot, so I tried connecting the USB Cable from my DSLR to the MacBook Pro (mid -2012).

Hope this helps! 😀

Thanks very much. It solved my problem too. 🙂

Out of all the solutions, this one worked for me. Thank you!

this worked for me as well thank you

Try opening Aperture or Image Capture prior to inserting the card into the card slot. This worked for me using Photos and Image Capture.

Andy