How To Stop iTunes From Opening When You Plug In Your Phone

You plug your iPhone and its Lightning cable into your laptop at work to get a quick battery boost, and then, ahhh! iTunes opens automatically, hogging your screen real estate. It's not the most annoying thing in the world, but it is up there with those incessant update notifications (if there aren't a few of those onscreen, too). But there's an easy fix. Open iTunes and select Preferences in the iTunes drop-down menu. Within Preferences, select Devices and check the box next to the words "Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically." Click OK and you're good to go: iTunes will no longer automatically open when you plug in your phone. (When you do want to backup your phone, you'll now need to open iTunes yourself, though.) If you're annoyed by Photos popping up, you can fix that, too. Plug in your phone and open Photos. Along the upper bar, next to a small phone logo you'll see "Open Photos for this device." Uncheck the box to the left of that. Now you can plug your phone into your laptop at any time, without fear of apps opening up willy-nilly.