Disable Media keys and other devices opening Media apps on MacOS

I connected my Airpods Max's and Music launched. I don't want anything to happen when I connect a device.

Turns out there's two pieces at work, the remote-control daemon looking for media keys, and the ImageCapture service looking at devices plugged in. Here's how to disable both.

# disable the remote‐control daemon for your user
launchctl disable gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.rcd

# make it stick across reboots
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist

# stop devices launching apps
defaults -currentHost write com.apple.ImageCapture disableHotPlug -bool true

Be sure to log out and back in for these to take full effect.

Oh and fun fact, you can't actually remove the built-in macOS apps like Music. I even tried booting into recovery and launching a terminal there, but even that's blocked. Will post if I find a way.