comments Written By: Scott Jangro
July 24, 2007

iPhone Annoyance: Stopping iPhoto from Launching (OS X)

iphone-07-01-09-3.gif
I have my iPhone set up to automatically sync, which is a good thing.

However, every time I plug my iPhone into the sync/charging dock, iPhoto starts up and asks me if I want to import my photos.

This only happens if you’ve got pictures on the iPhone. And while I often take pictures, it’s more to have fun pics on my phone. I generally don’t want to import them into iPhoto, or do anything else with them for that matter.

Therefore, it’s seriously annoying to have iPhoto launch automatically.

I discovered today that while I cannot configure my system specifically so that the iPhone doesn’t trigger iPhoto to launch, I can configure it so that iPhoto doesn’t launch automatically when ANY camera device is plugged in.

There’s an app in OS X called ‘Image Capture’ that controls this behavior. Simply open up Image Capture > Preferences and set the “When a camera is connected option” to “No Application”.

imagecapture.jpg

Now this will affect all cameras, but that’s fine by me. I don’t mind opening up iPhoto when I actually want to import pictures.

And of course this applies to OS X. Windows users, you’re on your own, but you’ve got so many other annoyances that … oh never mind.

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12 Comments... What do you think?


  1. wildstar41 said on July 30th, 2007 at 11:30 pm

    thanks this was driving me bananas. Apple needs to add a preference to iTunes or iPhoto. Who even uses image capture??

  2. Todd Harrison - LA Headshot photography said on July 31st, 2007 at 1:06 am

    I have the same feeling. I have picture that I just want to keep for fun but OSX is always trying to import these. I have to agree. it get annoying!

  3. dan claire said on August 4th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    thanks! very helpful.

  4. Steve Madden said on August 6th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

    Thank. These people need to give us choice. It should be customizable

  5. Widget said on August 8th, 2007 at 12:03 pm

    Thanks a million! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!! After all, it’s not that hard to open iPhoto when you want to import from your REAL camara. Thanks again!

  6. Paul said on September 4th, 2007 at 12:56 am

    Or you could create a smart playlist in iPhoto that collects all of the photos from the iPhone automatically (the rule is camera = iPhone). Then have iTunes synch that playlist back to the iphone.

  7. Dan said on September 20th, 2007 at 3:14 pm

    Thanks! This did the trick. That was annoying th heck out of me. Good read. :)

  8. Mauritius said on September 25th, 2007 at 5:38 am

    Thanks so much! I thought this could not be in other way.

  9. Ravi said on November 4th, 2007 at 10:25 am

    Thank you very much!

  10. cran jenk said on December 20th, 2007 at 5:58 pm

    Thanks! That did the trick!!!

  11. Albert said on January 29th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    Hummm, that didn’t work for me.

  12. Jason Pearson said on March 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    Thanks for posting this. I don’t have an iPhone yet, but I am shopping for one. I will keep this in mind, cause that would be really annoying!

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