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Turn Off The iPhoto (Photos) Auto Import Dialog

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If you are a Lightroom user who works on a Mac, you have probably run into the issue of iPhoto (now called Photos) automatically opening every time you insert a media card. Sure, you close iPhoto/Photos and continue with Lightroom, but it is a PITA to have to do this every time you import. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution using a standard Mac program named Image Capture, that will turn this sucker off for good.

Here’s how you do it:

1.) Insert a camera media card into your card reader. When iPhoto/Photos opens, close it.

2.) Open Finder and navigate to the Applications folder. Scroll until you find an application named Image Capture. Double-click on Image Capture to open the program.

Image Capture comes with your Mac and is in the Applications folder.

Figure 1

3.) When Image Capture opens, notice your media card is listed at the top-left under Devices. Click on the media card to highlight it if it isn’t already highlighted, as circled in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Click on your media card at the top-left to select it. Then use the tiny button at the bottom-left to expand the dialog.

Figure 2

4.) Okay. So far so good. Now for the tricky part. See the small icon at the bottom left? Click it to open a hidden menu. (Don’t ask me why Apple decided to start hiding this menu!) When you click the icon the menu shown in Figure 3 appears. Click in the menu and choose Other, as shown in Figure 4, to open a drop-down menu showing other applications that are located in your Applications folder.

Figure 3: Use this menu to change the default program that you Mac uses for importing photos.

Figure 3

Figure 4: Select Other from the menu to open a larger menu.
Figure 4

5.) Navigate to your Lightroom folder and open it to reveal the Lightroom application nested within it. (If you are using an older version of Lightroom, the application may not be in a Lightroom folder.) Select Lightroom and click the Open button at the bottom right to choose it.

Figure 5: Select the Lightroom application and click the Open button to choose it.

Figure 5

6.) Now you should see Lightroom displayed in the menu, as shown in Figure 6. You are done with Image Capture so you can go ahead and close it.That’s all there is to it. iPhoto/Photos won’t open when you insert your media card any more. You should see Lightroom’s import dialog instead.

Now you're good to go!

Figure 6

Now you’re good to go. Just be advised that you will need to do this one time with each of the various media cards you use with your camera(s).