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Mac 101: Stop the iPhone from opening iPhoto

by Michael Grothaus Dec 31st 2009 at 8:00AM

More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

I love iPhoto. I use it for most of my photo editing. The thing I don't like about iPhoto is how it opens each and every time I connect my iPhone to my Mac. What strikes my as plain silly is that, since the introduction of the iPhone two and a half years ago, Apple has not built in an option in the iTunes iPhone status window to disable the automatic iPhoto launch every time you plug in your iPhone.

If you want to take control of this behavior, and you'd prefer to stick with Apple's built-in tools (rather than take advantage of the free and easy Cameras prefpane) there is good news: there's a simple way to disable this 'feature' and it doesn't involve command line stuff. Even better, it isn't an "all or nothing" solution – eg: you can still have iPhoto automatically open when you connect your camera, but not have it open when you connect your iPhone. Aron mentioned this approach a few months ago but I thought it would be helpful to walk through it in detail.

It should be noted that this solution only works on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. If you are running 10.5 or earlier, you'll have to use one of the solutions noted above; we recommend the free Cameras preference pane as a quick fix.

You'll see the image above is of iPhoto's preferences. You may think the option of disabling iPhone auto-open is in there, but it's not. To stop the iPhone from opening iPhoto you actually need to launch the Image Capture application.

Step 1: Launch Image Capture (Applications>Image Capture). If your iPhone isn't plugged in already, plug it in to the USB port on your Mac. It should then show up in the devices source list.

Step 2: Make sure you have the iPhone selected in the source list. When you do, you should see any photos you have on the iPhone appear in the right-hand column of the Image Capture application.
Step 3: At the bottom of the source list, you'll see your iPhone's name then, below that, you'll see the words "Connecting this iPhone opens:" and a drop-down menu. Select "No application." Now close the Image Capture app and you're done. No more iPhone opening up iPhoto, but your other cameras will still auto-launch iPhoto when they are connected!


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More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. I love iPhoto. I use it for most of my photo editing. The thing I don't like about...
 

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24 Comments

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Mountain

Nice post, the iPhoto auto launch has been annoying me for a while and this post was the clearest one on how to disable, thanks!

February 11 2010 at 7:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
skrobarfam

Thank you so much! I've been wondering how to stop iTunes from opening. I knew there had to be a way to do it!

January 18 2010 at 1:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
pwb

@phlavor, @rg:

Actually it's dead easy to do so:

* In "Image Capture", specify "AutoImporter" as application to open when your iPhone gets connected

The photos will by default end up in an "AutoImporter" folder in your home directory's Pictures folder. If you want to be fancy:

* Open /System/Library/Image Capture/Support/Application/AutoImporter
* Open the Preferences and specify the folder where the photos should be saved.
* You can also let it create a new subfolder for every import. The subfolder name can contain the date, camera name, user name and/or a sequence number
* Additionally you can specify that the photos should be deleted from the camera

Now every time you connect your iPhone (or other supported camera), your photos will automatically be copied to the specified location.

January 04 2010 at 4:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
d

thanks. good tip.

January 02 2010 at 9:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
roger

Good tip. iPhoto's constant opening (when I didn't want it to) had been annoying.

January 01 2010 at 4:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hdennery

AGain thanks

January 01 2010 at 11:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hdennery

Thanks for solving this riddle. Been looking at TUAW for 4 months so first time I saw this. Thanks for all u do

January 01 2010 at 11:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pico

I also hate having iPhoto pop up, but It only does that when I have new photos that have not been backed up to iPhoto and I prefer to deal with that by simply letting iPhoto import and then delete the photos from my camera roll. Since I let my iPhone synch my iPhotos, the pictures remain on my iPhone, but just not in my camera roll, and until I take new photos, my empty camera roll means that iPhoto won't pop open next time I synch. Also I believe that the photos that get synched back to my iPhone are smaller than the originals in iPhoto and end up saving space on the iPhone.

December 31 2009 at 3:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
phlavor

I like syncing with iPhoto but I wish it could happen in the background and not have iPhoto jump into view whenever my wife drops her phone on the dock while I am quite busy doing something else thank you very much.

I might look into writing a script that launches iPhoto and downloads photos from attached phones at three in the morning or something.

December 31 2009 at 1:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rg

What's even more amazing is that there is no way to Sync photos taken with the iPhone to the Mac. I know I can copy them to iPhoto, but I would rather Sync.

December 31 2009 at 11:29 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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