I spend a good portion on-line looking at a variety of message boards and product chats. What I have come to find is a common question involving the iPhone and issues when you connect it to your Mac. The most common complaint I read from people is that they dont know how to stop iPhoto from automatically opening when they plug in their iPhone. Well, fear not, that's why I'm here. I'll give you a very easy route to turning this feature off so you never have to worry about iPhoto opening on it's own again.
The reason iPhoto opens automatically is because that is the default option for all of your photos. So, it doesn't just open when you plug in your iPhone, but it normally will open when any camera is connected. This is mainly so you can easily import photos into iPhoto and store them there. Now, iPhoto is a good source for storing photos, but it's not for everyone, so here is how you can make it stop opening automatically.
When you open iPhoto, you do not have to have your iPhone plugged in or anything. You can just open the application on your desktop. Once iPhoto is opened, go up to the top left of your desktop, you will see pull down menus like iPhoto, file, edit, photo and so on. Simply click on the iPhoto pull down, you will see a variety of options to click on, click on the "preferences" option. You are now presented with a new window that pops up. There will be a new set of tabs to choose from, general, appearance, events, sharing and a couple of others. Click on the "general" tab, so that it is selected, you should see a few options. The very last one should say, "connecting camera opens", with some options to choose from. Mine, for example, has iPhoto, Image Capture and No application. The latter is what you're going to want to select. Once No Application is selected, you will no longer have to worry about iPhoto opening every time you plug in your iPhone.
Bear in mind, this is not saying that iPhoto will not read your iPhone. If you open up iPhoto, it will still see your iPhone, but it gives you the option to actually have to open iPhoto, instead of it launching automatically. It will also prevent iPhoto from opening every time you plug in any other type of camera device.
Some of you out there may be saying, "What is the benefit of doing this?" or wondering if there even is one. Technically, there isn't an advantage, so you're not really saving time. However, for some, it's an annoying feature. They want to plug in their iPhone without the intentions of importing photos. Some people also have slower computers, so when iPhoto opens, you have to wait for it to open, thus possibly causing other applications to crash if your computer can't handle too many things happening at once.
So, let's do a quick recap of instructions:
- Open iPhoto (iPhone can be plugged in but doesn't need to be)
- Click on Preferences, un the iPhoto pull down at the top of your desktop
- Click on the General tab and go to the bottom of the menu
- Change Connecting Camera Opens, to No application
- Good to go, and iPhoto will still recognize the iPhone it just won't open up automatically.
I hope that this settles a lot of frustration you are having with iPhoto opening. It should solve the problem, and if you wish to change it back to open up, just go through the same process but select iPhoto under the "connecting camera opens" option.
