Don't Want to See Photos.app? There's a Command For That.

Don’t Want to See Photos.app? There’s a Command For That.

April 13, 2015 - 9:00pm

I have removed the original post as it may not have been a good idea after all. There is a comment thread below that discusses an alternative way to “hide” the app from view. Please read those if you're interested in hiding Photos.app from your system.

If you already followed the previously published “hide” instructions, please un-hide the app using the following steps:

Launch Terminal. (It's in your Utilities folder)
Type cd /Applications and hit return. (This will move you to the Applications folder.)
Type ls and hit return. (This will list all the apps in the folder. Make sure Photos.app is there.)
Type sudo mv .Photos.app Photos.app and you guessed it… hit return
Enter your admin password. You won't actually see what you type, just type and hit return.

Apologies for the confusion!

Level:: Advanced
App:: Apple Photos for macOS
Platform:: macOS
Author:: Gerry Curry

Comments

Reply from barefootguru
on April 13, 2015 - 11:15pm

Whoa dude, that’s likely to come back and bite you. On the next OS update you’ll probably end up with a .Photos.app and a half created Photos.app

Use the chflags command to mark it hidden instead: http://www.howtogeek.com/211496/how-to-hide-files-and-view-hidden-files-…

Permalink

Reply from PhotoJoseph
on April 13, 2015 - 11:36pm

Thanks for this. Would like to get a second opinion here as well… anyone?

@PhotoJoseph
— Have you signed up for the mailing list?

Permalink

Reply from Butch Miller
on April 14, 2015 - 5:47am

I’m not a UNIX expert .. but I think barefoot guru is right.

Since the Photos.app is part of the OS and incorporated into the underpinnings of system level functions, hiding the app is only useful until the next update/upgrade cycle to OS X.

Hiding the app is bound to cause some issues at some point. At the very least, repeating the procedure after each and every update/upgrade hereafter.

It may be a more wise approach to learn to coexist with Photos.app, even if you don’t wish to embrace it fully at this time.

If users set all image files types to another app besides Photos.app as default (Simply do a “Get Info” on a jpeg, tiff, dng, nef, cr2, png, etc. file and set the default to your desired application … be sure to select “change all”) Then be sure to remove the Photos.app from the Dock.

This doesn’t eliminate the possibility of it being opened or utilized, but reduces the odds greatly.

Permalink

Reply from yomcat
on April 14, 2015 - 7:15am

barefootguru has it correct. chflags is a far better way to hide files and folders, and far less likely to cause problems in the long run. In fact, it’s how Apple hides the user Library folder.

So the command is:

sudo chflags hidden /Applications/Photos.app/

Edit: After a little testing, it seems that “open -a Photos” won’t be affected by either change, so anything that tries to open Photos will still be able to.

Permalink

Reply from Jochen H. Schmidt
on April 14, 2015 - 11:59am

Its definitely not a good idea to rename the Application. While I do not think that a half Photos.app will get created it could just be that there later will be a new (complete) one and the hidden one will at least waste space or that the installation may fail. There could also be other Problems with components who rely on an Application “Photos.app”. The hidden flag is much better suited to hide the Application.

http://neonsqua.re

Permalink