Automatically launch a program or action when an external drive or disk is connected

Question

I have an external drive. Is it possible to launch a program or perform an action when I connect it or plug it in?

Solution

Marco Polo can perform actions (you specify) based on attached USB devices.

Edit: MarcoPolo isn't supported anymore, but there is a maintained fork of it: ControlPlane

OTHER TIPS

The likely most robust solution is to create a launchd job with the StartOnMount property set to -boolean YES:

StartOnMount <boolean>
This optional key causes the job to be started every time a filesystem is mounted.

This is how Time Machine does it (see /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-attach.plist).

You need to check if the desired /Volume/... is available, but in my experience, it's faster than using Folder Actions.

A similar question has been posted in the MacRumors forum here:

The specific suggestion there is to use the application MarcoPolo.

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