Raise your virtual hand if you are a photographer who uses an Apple Macintosh computer – laptop's like MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or the desktop iMac or MacPro.
So, you feel my pain then don't you? You know, when you insert a memory card from your camera into the card reader and instead of just having access to your files through the Finder, you are abruptly confronted by Apple's new Photos application.
It launches, like an unsolicited pop-up advertisement on your favorite website. The reaction is to go and shut the program down. Quickly. How many times in a day do you want to keep doing that? Imagine coming back from a wedding or a long photo session and having multiple cards and having to deal with that pesky program opening again and again.
I was quite frustrated, but clearly I wasn't the only one feeling this pain. Gerik Parmele is a photographer and videographer based in Columbia, Missouri Tweeted out that he had found a hack to stop the Photos app from loading on his Macintosh computer.
So, if you are running your photography business on a Macintosh and you want to stay super efficient and cognizant of your use of time, follow Gerik's suggestion in this short video below:
Gerik suggests buying and using Keyboard Maestro for this hack to work ($36). If you can suggest an alternative method for stopping the Photos application from launching, please share your ideas below.
Credit and kudos go to Gerik Parmele for coming up with this work around. So, please follow him on Twitter and support his projects whenever possible.
If you enjoyed this little tip and found it helpful, please share the link to the post with your friends via social media or on your own blogs. If you would like to see more such time-saving tips, please comment below and let me know.
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All you have to do is open the application Image Utility (while a memory card is inserted) and change the popup selector (in the lower left corner of the main image utility window) to say “no application”
MacProCT – Yes this is true. But it has its flaws. After every shoot, when I’m done with my images, I reformat my cards in camera. Which erases that setting and when I put the same card back in to my computer it launches Photos app again. That’s the first problem. The other thing I contend with is I’m sometimes shooting with multiple cards, sometimes as many as eight. So I’d have to do this for every card, assuming that I would never reformat them. And finally there are times when I’m working with other photographers and video shooters who are handling me their cards as well, so every card I touch I would have to activate this setting via Image Utility, again assuming that no one reformats their cards afterward. This is where I was at when I finally had enough, and came up with the hack I did. I really think Apple failed on this one by not allowing it’s users to turn off this feature all together. In the end turning it off via Image Utility is not a sustainable solution for me, personally, and I imagine other professionals.
Very true and fair point. I’ll admit I hadn’t watched your video previously and heard you point out that reformatting the card wipes the settings.
This is a great solution with Keyboard Maestro, which is a great utility.
Another solution I’ve utilized before, with apps that I want nothing to do with…. Method 1) ZIP the app in question and then delete the original. When / if you want the app in the future, you can unzip it and have it right back. Method 2) If you’re familiar with creating Disk images in Disk Utility you could put the app in an image. Then trash the original. Again, when you want the app back, just copy it back to the apps folder.
In both cases, with an Apple app like this, you’d want to unzip it / copy it back to the apps folder before you run major OS updates (like the recently released 10.10.4).
-Chris Hart, Independent Apple Consultant in Connecticut
Another great tip Chris! Thanks. I was able to compress the Photos app. But when I went to delete the original I got a popup message that says: “Photos” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by OS X.
Ah yes, Apple is now actively blocking the deleting of these apps. So the trick is to use the Terminal (in the Utilities folder).
In the Terminal type: sudo rm -rf
followed by one tap of the space bar
and then drag the Photos app into the Terminal window
(this will save you from typing out the location of the app)
then press Enter/Return
You will be asked for your Mac password (you obviously need to be an administrator). Note that you will not get visual feedback of your password. Don’t worry, it’s being accepted, but be methodical about typing it correctly. Then press Enter/Return and the app will be gone. :)
Nice! I’ll give it a try.
Here’s an interesting twist. The computer that I was struggling with was a brand new computer, out of the box with a fresh install of Yosemite. However, I just updated my Macbook Pro to Yosemite and was expecting the same problem. But I didn’t. Photos didn’t open automatically. A few other people I’ve talked to also seem to experience this problem on new computers and not on computers where they are upgrading to Yosemite. So there must be some hidden preference somewhere I think that could solve this.
Thanks for continuing to track this issue for us, Gerik! Much appreciated.
Oh, wow … thanks for the step-by-step instructions. I’ll have to give this a try. Gerik, I just updated from iPhoto to Photos and it’s still happening to me.