iPhone Annoyance: Stopping iPhoto from Launching (OS X)

by Scott Jangro on 24 July 2007

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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”.

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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.

  • Interesting article. What really sucks is owning a PC with an iPhone, then your basically out of luck for a lot of iPhone related stuff. Oh well! The phone still rocks!
  • philouze
    thanks, very helpful! my girlfriend will think I'm a hero again :-) Oh and this windows users you're on your own comment was so funny and yet so true ;-)
  • N
    Thanks... this was very helpful
  • Sonha
    Thank you so much! This was incredibly helpful, especially since I have an older version of iphoto which doesn't allow me to change the camera preference.
  • 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!
  • Widget
    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!
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