How to Import Photos From an SD Card Without the Photos App

October 6, 2026 · 7 min read

You don't need the Photos library to get pictures off a camera card. A Mac gives you two built-in ways to copy them into ordinary folders — Image Capture and the Finder — and both work. What they don't do is sort the shots by the day they were taken, keep a RAW and its JPEG together under a new name, remember what you already imported, or check that each copy matches the original. This guide covers both built-in methods, their traps, and how the card import in Folia Files handles the rest.

The short answer

Quickest, no extra app: insert the card, open Image Capture (in Applications), pick the card in the sidebar, choose a folder in the import menu at the bottom, and import.
Most control by hand: open the card in the Finder, go into its DCIM folder, and drag the photos to a folder of your own.
Sorted, verified and without duplicates: use a card importer that reads the shooting date of each file and checks every copy. Folia Files has one built in: Tools › Import a Card.

Method 1: Image Capture

Image Capture comes with macOS and imports from cameras, phones and memory cards.

Insert the card (or connect the camera with its cable).
Open Image Capture from the Applications folder.
Select the card in the sidebar. Its photos and videos appear as a list or as thumbnails.
In the import menu at the bottom of the window, choose a destination folder (Pictures, or Other… for any folder).
Select the shots you want and click Import, or click Import All.

It's simple and it never touches your Photos library. But everything lands in one folder: a card holding a week of shooting becomes a single flat folder of several hundred files. It doesn't create a folder per day or per event, and it doesn't rename anything.

There is also an option at the bottom of the window to delete the items from the card after import. Leave it off: if a copy went wrong, the only original is gone. Format the card in the camera once you know your copies are safe.

Method 2: Copy from the Finder

A memory card mounts like any disk, in the sidebar under Locations.

Open the card and go into DCIM. Cameras put pictures in numbered subfolders such as 100CANON, 101MSDCF or 100_FUJI.
Select the files and drag them to a folder of your own, or copy them with ⌘C and paste with ⌘V.

Watch out for videos: many cameras don't keep them in DCIM. Sony writes its clips under PRIVATE/M4ROOT, and AVCHD cameras use an AVCHD folder. If you only copy DCIM, you can leave the videos behind without noticing.

The traps of copying by hand

Duplicates. If you leave the photos on the card and import it again next week, you have to remember where you stopped. Copy everything again into a new folder and you get the same files twice.
Name collisions. Camera file numbers go up to 9999 and then start again, and two cameras can both produce IMG_0423.JPG. Dropped in the same folder, the Finder asks whether to replace, skip or keep both.
RAW and JPEG drift apart. If you shoot RAW + JPEG and rename one file, its twin keeps the old name — and so does the .xmp sidecar your editing app wrote for it.
No date folders. Sorting a week of shooting into one folder per day means reading dates in the Info window or in a column of the list view.
No verification. Neither the Finder nor Image Capture compares the copy with the original. A failing card or a cable that drops during the copy can leave you with a damaged file that looks fine in the folder.

Method 3: The card import in Folia Files

Folia Files is a file manager for the Mac. Its card import copies photos and videos to the folders you choose, in folders by shooting day, and it's part of the tools of Folia Files.

The Import a Card tool in Folia Files with a camera card inserted: the shots grouped by shooting day, the Where, Sorted and Options steps, and the import button

Open it

Insert a card: Folia Files recognises it (the DCIM folder, or the video folders of Sony, Panasonic and Canon cameras) and shows a banner, Card “…” inserted, with an Import… button. If Folia Files is in the background, a notification offers the same.
From the menu: Tools › Import a Card.
From the sidebar: right-click the card under its disk and choose Import Photos and Videos….
A copy of a card or any folder of photos: in the tool, Choose… › Choose Folder….

Choose the days

The card is read once: each photo's shooting date comes from its EXIF data, each video's from its metadata, and the file's date on the card when there is neither. The shots appear grouped by day, with thumbnails, the most recent day first. A line at the top sums up the card: how many photos and videos, their total size, and how many are new. Untick a day to leave it on the card for now. A day you already imported carries an Already imported badge.

Choose where and how

The panel on the right has three steps:

Where: the destination folder (Pictures by default), and optionally Second copy, on another disk — for example an external drive. The second copy is made from the first one, so the card is only read once.
Sorted:
- Folders: By day, within the year (2026/2026-10-01), By month, within the year, By day, or All in the destination;
- Event: an optional name added to the folder, such as “Iceland” (2026/2026-10-01 Iceland);
- Names: Original names, Date and time taken (2026-10-01 14.32.05), or Event and number.
An example of the full path for the first file appears below, so you see the result before importing.
Options: Skip what was already imported, Eject the card when done, and Offer to import when a card is inserted.

Then click Import — the button shows how many items will be copied. You can pause or stop the import, and it also appears in the Operations popover of the toolbar.

What it does for you

Every copy is verified. Each file is compared with the original on the card (SHA-256) before it counts as imported. The card itself is never modified: nothing is deleted or renamed on it.
RAW and JPEG stay together. Files that share a base name on the card (IMG_0423.CR3 and IMG_0423.JPG) keep a shared name when they are renamed, and sidecar files (.xmp, .thm, .aae, .lrv) follow their picture.
No duplicates. Folia Files remembers the name, size and date of every file it imported. Insert the same card next week and only the new shots are imported.
No overwriting. If a name is already taken in the destination folder, the new file gets -2, -3…
Ejected only when all went well. With Eject the card when done, the card is ejected at the end only if every file was copied. If macOS refuses because the card is in use, see how to eject a disk that says it's in use.
Undo. The import is recorded in the history (Operations) as Card Import, so you can undo it like any other copy.

At the end, a banner sums up what was imported, with a button to show the new folder.

Trip photos in Folia Files: the Pictures folder in columns, the trip folder in gallery view

In the App Store version

The card import works the same in both versions. In the App Store version, the sandbox only lets Folia Files read the folders and disks you open to it: before the first import, an Open panel asks you to click Allow. For a card, this is asked once for all your disks, including the ones you plug in later.

Which one should you use?

One card, now and then, a single folder is fine: Image Capture does the job.
You want to choose exactly which files go where: copy from the Finder, and check the video folders.
You shoot often, in RAW + JPEG, with a second copy on another drive, and never want to import twice: a card importer that sorts by shooting day and verifies each copy saves you the manual checks. That's what Import a Card in Folia Files is for.

Whatever you choose, keep the photos on the card until they exist in two places, then format the card in the camera.