Stop Photos auto-opening on Mac when a device connects

If every phone, camera, or SD card you connect makes Photos leap open, skip the per-device toggles and flip the master switch. macOS routes all of this through Image Capture's hot-plug behaviour; disabling it once — from Image Capture or a single Terminal command — stops Photos (and any other app) auto-launching for anything you plug in.

The one setting behind all of them

It feels like several different quirks — the iPhone opens Photos, the camera opens Photos, the SD card opens Photos — but they all run through one mechanism. When any imaging-class device connects, macOS consults a hot-plug setting owned by Image Capture and launches whatever app that setting names, which is Photos out of the box. Turn the hot-plug behaviour off and every one of those cases goes quiet at the same time. That's why chasing it device by device is the slow way; there's a single master control.

Turn it off in Terminal

The fastest way to disable it everywhere is one command. The -currentHost flag is required — this key is stored per-Mac, and without the flag the command writes to the wrong scope and changes nothing:

# Stop any connected device auto-opening Photos / any app
defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool true

# Undo — restore auto-open on connect
defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool false

Reconnect a device once afterwards so macOS picks up the new setting. There's no restart or logout, and it applies uniformly on Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia.

Or set it per device in Image Capture

If you'd rather keep auto-open for some things and kill it for others, do it selectively:

1. Open Image Capture from Applications or Spotlight.
2. Select a device in the Devices list on the left.
3. Click the toggle arrow at the bottom-left to reveal the options.
4. Set Connecting this device opens to No application — or to a different app, if you'd prefer it launch your own editor instead of Photos.

Each device remembers its own choice, which is the granular counterpart to the global switch above.

Which route to pick

Reach for the Terminal switch when you simply never want anything auto-launching — it's one line and covers phones, cameras, and readers you haven't even bought yet. Use Image Capture's per-device option when your answer differs by device: silence the iPhone you charge daily, but let a working camera open Lightroom. Both are fully reversible, so there's no risk in trying the global switch first and carving out exceptions later if you miss the convenience for one device.

It covers apps beyond Photos

Because the hot-plug setting decides which app launches on connect — not Photos specifically — disabling it also stops anything else you've pointed at a device from springing open, whether that's an older import tool or a scanner utility. That makes it the cleanest one-stop answer when you're not sure what's actually launching, only that something is. And since it lives per-Mac under your account, setting it once on your main machine handles every device you own there, today and in the future, until you decide to switch it back on.

While you're stopping things from launching

Devices aren't the only thing that springs open uninvited. If apps and windows relaunch every time you restart, see how to stop apps reopening on Mac for a calmer, quieter startup.