The Legacy Media Sidebar Clutter
macOS has a long history of making media management intuitive. To ensure you never lose track of a mounted disk, the Finder sidebar includes a specific “Locations” setting designed to automatically display older physical media. By default, macOS is configured to “Show CDs, DVDs, and iPods” in the sidebar the moment they are connected or inserted into a drive.
However, modern Macs haven’t included internal CD or DVD drives in well over a decade, and the original iPod lineup has been entirely discontinued. Unless you are actively using a vintage USB SuperDrive to rip CDs or are a collector syncing an old iPod Classic via a legacy cable, this setting is entirely obsolete. Leaving it enabled means macOS will continuously monitor the USB bus for these specific legacy device identifiers. More importantly, if you do accidentally mount a virtual ISO image that macOS interprets as a CD, it will clutter your sidebar. You can safely disable this option to modernize your Finder settings.
How to Hide Legacy Media in the Sidebar
You can remove the automatic sidebar population for CDs, DVDs, and iPods via the Finder Preferences menu.
- Click the Finder icon in your Dock so that “Finder” appears in the top-left corner of your screen.
- In the top menu bar, click on Finder, then select Settings… (or Preferences).
- In the Settings window, click on the Sidebar tab at the top.
- Look through the list of checkboxes under the “Locations” section.
- Locate the checkbox for CDs, DVDs, and iPods.
- Click the checkbox to remove the checkmark.
- Close the Settings window.
From now on, on the rare occasion you connect an older iPod or mount a CD image, it will not appear in the sidebar. You can still easily access these devices by opening a new Finder window and pressing Shift + Cmd + C to view your main Computer directory.