macOS includes a deeply ingrained automation designed for amateur photographers: whenever you insert an SD card from a digital camera into your Mac’s card reader, the operating system instantly launches the Apple “Photos” app and automatically jumps to the Import screen, assuming you want to ingest the entire card into your iCloud library.
If you are a professional videographer pulling footage off a Sony A7SIII, or a developer using a Raspberry Pi SD card, you do not want your raw files imported into Apple Photos. Having to manually quit this massive, memory-heavy application every single time you mount an SD card is incredibly tedious.
You can configure macOS to ignore SD cards and stop launching the Photos app.
How to Stop the Automatic Photos Launch
Unlike most macOS automations, this toggle is actually hidden inside the Photos app itself, rather than the System Settings.
- Insert your SD card into your Mac (or connect your camera via USB).
- Allow the Photos app to automatically open one last time.
- Look at the main window of the Photos app. In the left-hand sidebar, your SD card or camera should be highlighted under the “Devices” section.
- Look at the very top-left corner of the main viewing pane (just below the toolbar).
- You will see a small checkbox labeled Open Photos for this device.
- Uncheck this box.
- Quit the Photos app.
This setting is device-specific. macOS remembers the hardware ID of that specific SD card or camera body. The next time you insert that exact card, it will mount silently on your Desktop or in Finder, completely ignoring the Apple Photos application.