How can I prevent iPhoto from auto-launching when I plug in a card reader?

November 22, 2005 10:10 AM

How can I prevent iPhoto from auto-launching when I plug in a card reader? When I plug in a card reader, iPhoto assumes that it is being summoned and auto-magically launches itself. I don't want this to happen. I don't want iPhoto to ever launch without my permission, which I might grant once a year or so. Yet, every day I have to cope with it launching multiple times as I attempt to transfer photos to my hard drive. It is a minor annoyance, true, but it is an annoyance. My question, then, is how can I make iPhoto stop doing this? I've searched its settings high-and-low, but to no avail. I've searched the System Preferences high-and-low, but to no avail. There must be something I'm missing.
posted by jdroth to computers & internet (8 comments total)

iPhoto does not do this for me. Have you looked in the preferences of the iSync application? I'm not at home to check, but it seems like this is where I set this.
posted by odinsdream at 10:18 AM on November 22, 2005

Launch the "Image Capture" application in your Applications folder.

Go to the Preferences menu item under the Image Capture menu and pull down "No Application" for "When a camera is connected, open:".

Despite the card not being a camera, Image Capture likes to launch iPhoto when it sees camera-like information on the card.
posted by tomierna at 10:21 AM on November 22, 2005

( The masses rejoice!!! I've been wondering how to do this for _ages_! )
posted by silusGROK at 10:25 AM on November 22, 2005

I've been looking for this too.

Thanks!
posted by bshort at 10:29 AM on November 22, 2005

I never noticed the Image Capture application before, and it wouldn't have occurred to me to look there if I had. Thanks, tomierna. You've made me a happy man. (Especially since I can eventually redirect the cards to open in Photoshop or some other app, if I want.)
posted by jdroth at 11:08 AM on November 22, 2005

Launch the "Image Capture" application in your Applications folder.

This is part of the intuitive Macintosh interface.
posted by alms at 11:42 AM on November 22, 2005

This is part of the intuitive Macintosh interface.

Snark.

Though, in this case, deserved.

It makes sense from a workflow perspective that Image Capture is an independent, application-agnostic program, but when the card keeps opening iPhoto, the logical reaction is to suspect that the solution is a preference in iPhoto.

I do believe you're given the opportunity to choose this behavior when installing or upgrading iPhoto. Oddly, though, this only makes it more likely that you'll return to iPhoto when you decide you want to change the behavior.
posted by baltimore at 12:01 PM on November 22, 2005

Similarly unintuitive, the place to choose a default web-browser is in the Safari application preferences, not in the System Prefs panel.

This thing should definitely be moved out of Image Capture and into the System Preferences. It's already there for CD/DVD "what to do when inserted" options.
posted by odinsdream at 4:51 PM on November 22, 2005