Q: How can I permanently disable Photos.app?

Apple is bundling it along with Mail, Preview, etc. with the system so it can't be deleted. Just drag it out of the Dock and ignore it.  If you have a Photos library that you don't want you can delete it.

tell Apple - https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

As to stopping launch when a camera (or memory card) is inserted - while  the camera is connected in Photos uncheck the box to open Photos when this device is connected

For launching when you log into a user account right click on the icon in the dock and uncheck launch at login

LN

Open Image Capture, insert your devices, and choose the application to open for each one, or choose none. You have to select the device in the window's sidebar. Select the icon at the bottom of the sidebar to expand for options.

Check you login items from Users & Groups pane and remove Photos if shown. Do this for all accounts.

Delete any Photos Library created by the application. They should be in your user account in Pictures

Same problem here. I unchecked the box in Photos but it keeps opening every time I insert a CF card. This is because I format the card in my camera every time, a practice I've done since 2002. Photos thinks it is a new device because of this therefore it opens when my CF card is inserted. Annoying. I've sent feedback to Apple but don't expect a change. Unfortunately the engineers at Apple seem to think we users will bend to their will eventually.

I have Image Capture set to open Lightroom, which it does properly. Unfortunately Photos opens on it's own. It would be nice if Apple would put one more line, since there are so few, into the preferences so a user could tell it to behave.

I've considered writing an automator action to detect the card insertion and automatically close Photos at that time.

Insert one of your CF cards into the card reader and launch Image Capture. In the menu at the bottom select No application. 

If the dropdown menu doesn't appear click on the small triangle button in the lower left hand corner of the window.

If you CF cards have different names you may have to repeat this for each card with a different name.

OT,

I understand Image Capture and have used it very much. The problem with Photos is it thinks a CF card formatted in the camera is a new device each time it is inserted. It seems that if I set IC to open Lightroom that would still be telling Photos not to open, but it does. I tested it by inserting a card that had not been reformatted in the camera but shot several more frames on it and Photos did NOT open that time. That is how I came to the conclusion that it is the act of formatting the card in camera that makes Photos think it is a new device.

All of the cards have the same name, the one given by the camera during formatting.

I never want Photos.app to launch. Never. Never. Never. Not even once. Never.

 

Attempting to uninstall the app results in a message that the application "can't be modified or deleted because it's required by OS X."

Using Terminal, it is possible to remove the Photos app.  However, I'm not going to include the procedure here because I believe that for most users it is a risky and unnecessary procedure.  ( I have done this on one of my many Macintoshes as a test, and so far, no harmful effects.)

I think most people should keep Photos on their system because in the future some of the complaints or shortcomings about Photos may be eliminated or improved upon, and deleting the application completely may make difficulties should you choose to use Photos 1.1 or 2.0 in the future.

The easiest thing to do is to remove Photos from the dock and ignore it.

patrickfifth wrote:

The problem with Photos is it thinks a CF card formatted in the camera is a new device each time it is inserted.

In a sense, it is. Even though the camera may always give it the same human-readable name during formatting, either it or a modern OS like OS X will assign it a Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID). The OS will use that to identify the card -- otherwise there would be no way for the system to tell which of two cards with the same name, both attached to the system at the same time, to read from or write to. That would most likely cause data corruption on both cards.

R C-R

That makes total sense and seems very important at the programmer level. The problem persists, Photos wants to open every time a new card is inserted and this seems to be important at the user level. This is the only app I know of that will not bend to the will of the user in this sense. I can tell every other app designed for photography to open or not via Image Capture but not Photos. This is a problem at the highest Apple level in my opinion. Millions of iPhone users have no problem with this, a few photographers that use Apple hardware have a real problem with it. Shouldn't it be the users choice? (Without going into Terminal.)

Open Image Capture, insert your devices, and choose the application to open for each one, or choose none. You have to select the device in the window's sidebar.

As a way of confirming your excellent instructions, this is the same procedure I did.  When I insert a memory card, nothing happens.

I then launch Aperture ( Fully capable of showing keywords under thumbnails ) and then import my images, (super duper easy).

Select the icon at the bottom of the sidebar to expand for options.

Yes, that teeny-weeny, microscopic, up arrow could surely be improved upon.   As a student of Sherlock Holmes, even I had trouble finding it at first.

There IS a way to get rid of some Mac OS built-in apps, that you do not want to have, I did this for example with Garageband (altogether almost 2GB). This stays then in the Appstore "purchased" items, so it is reversible. I am going to do this with Photos also, because this app mingles with everything you do and it is practically not possible to silence it. I use Lightroom.

Although I am not a proponent of using third party tools in general and also not to do this, I was able to do it with Appdelete,  look at  http://www.reggieashworth.com

I must say I use this app sparsely to avoid doing such things in Terminal.

Lex