Photos.app no longer detecting SD cards for import

photossd card

Lately, when I try connecting any of my cameras' SD cards, either through a USB-based SD reader or by connecting the camera itself, Photos.app does not automatically launch when the card mounts, and if I manually start Photos (either before or after inserting the SD card) the Import tab does not appear. I cannot find any settings anywhere for controlling this behavior, either – as the Photos Import tab isn't appearing I never have an opportunity to check/uncheck the "launch Photos automatically for this device."

I have tried formatting the card both from my camera (a Sony ɑ6000) and from my computer, and shooting in both RAW and RAW+JPEG – but to no avail.

This setup used to work just fine, and I don't know what's changed. What settings might I need to dig through? I know that in the past, SD card behavior was controlled by a bunch of different weird things (including iPhoto and Aperture, neither of which I have installed anymore). The device doesn't appear in Image Capture either.

What might be going on, and how can I go about fixing this?

EDIT: I should add, the SD card mounts just fine and shows up in Finder – it's just that neither Photos nor Image Capture see that it's an SD card with photos and/or video. The manual import process does work but I'd like to be able to import and erase all photos and videos in one step as I used to be able to (videos are especially annoying to do manually as my camera uses AVCHD which is stored in an opaque "clips" database).

Best Answer

In the Terminal.app, is your SD card appearing with this command ?

ls /Volumes

If not, the problem is that your SD card is not mounted. https://superuser.com/questions/256445/macbook-pro-not-detecting-sd-card https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5349557?tstart=0

If your SD card is mounted, you can import your photos without the dedicated tab :

in the menubar

file -> import

keyboard shortcut

CMD + Shift + I