• About
• Latest Posts

Follow Anne

Author: Anne P. Mitchell

CEO at Institute for Social Internet Public Policy

Anne is an attorney, CEO of ISIPP, and Dean of Cyberlaw and Cybersecurity at Lincoln Law School.

Follow Anne

Latest posts by Author: Anne P. Mitchell (see all)

• You May Be Missing Private Messages on Facebook If You Aren’t Looking in These Two Places
  5 (1) - 9/16/2020
• New “4th Amendment is Not for Sale” Bill Would Ban Police from Buying Your Personal Data
  5 (2) - 8/31/2020
• What is a “Sweep Account” in Etrade and Other Online Financial and Investment Services?
  0 (0) - 8/27/2020

Frustrated that, since your last OS X update, Photos (formerly iPhoto) opens automatically whenever you connect your iPhone to your computer? Here’s how to stop Photos (iPhoto) from automatically launching when you connect your phone to your Mac or Macbook.

You’ve probably looked at every preference option in Photos, and couldn’t find it, right?

Yeah, we don’t like the new Photos icon either – it has nothing to do with pictures!

The reason you couldn’t find the preference to turn off auto-launching of Photos when your phone connects to your computer is because it’s not there!

Instead, the control for what app is opened and launched when you connect your iPhone to your computer is controlled by another app, called Image Capture, which is included as part of OS X Yosemite (10.10).

So, here’s what to do.

How to Stop Photos from Opening and Automatically Launching When You Connect Your Phone to Your Computer

1. Go to your Applications folder and find and open Image Capture

2. With Image Capture open, look way down in the lower left corner, to where it says “Connecting this iPhone opens:” above a drop-down menu

You will see that the “Connecting this iPhone opens” setting is defaulted to Photos!

(If you don’t see the “Connecting this iPhone opens:” and the drop-down menu in the lower left corner, click on the little triangle in a box.)

3. Click on the drop-down menu and select ‘No application’ (unless you want it to open a different app)

And that’s all there is to it! Now when you connect your phone to your computer the Photos app will behave itself.

Summary

Article Name

How to Stop Photos (iPhoto) from Opening when You Connect Your iPhone to Your Computer

Description

Here's how to stop Photos (formerly iPhoto) from automatically opening and launching when you connect your phone to your Mac or Macbook.

Author

Anne P. Mitchell