You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

PERMANENTLY Prevent Photos from Opening Automatically

Hi All!

I just upgraded to Yosemite, and with that came the Photos App that replaced iPhoto.

The internet is full of forum posts asking how to prevent Photos from launching automatically when a device is inserted, and full of replies saying to uncheck the tick box in Photos for each given device... But this is no solution at all!

AFTER telling Photos not to open for a given SD card, if the SD card is reformatted in-camera, the setting is lost and Photos will open again the next time the SD card is inserted.

Is there any way to PERMANENTLY prevent the Photos App from handling digital media FOR ALL DEVICES by default? Any way to reset the default behavior in Terminal perhaps???

I am not the only Photographer who prefers the Adobe software and has a bag full of SD cards that get reformatted routinely. It is seriously aggravating to come back from a shoot with 8 SD cards full of new media and wait for Photos to launch before returning to the Adobe family of software to import media over and over again. It's a major workflow disruption!

Mac Pro (Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Photos v1.0.1

Posted on Aug 16, 2015 9:53 PM

78 replies

Oct 14, 2016 3:16 PM in response to Dougmcs

Hi I found on another site this command for TERMINAL !

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool YES

Did the trick for me!!

LarryHN

Level 10

106,124 points

Oct 14, 2016 3:48 PM in response to guido.coza

Exactly as previously posted here

An easy way to disable the Photos app opening automatically for anything is to open Terminal and type this line:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool YES

wich prompted this warning

A caution: No application will open at all, after you enter this command. You will have to launch the app you want manually.

Sep 27, 2017 9:22 AM in response to S.P.L.

It works!!! Thanks a lot man, I was really fed up with that.

Like some others, I format regularly my cards.

PERMANENTLY Prevent Photos from Opening Automatically