Lion and later: Stop auto launching iTunes on Bluetooth headset connect?

iTunes has an annoying habit of auto launching upon connecting a Bluetooth headset to Mac. Pre-Lion, you could go to System Preferences -> CD/DVD Settings, and disable an option for auto launching iTunes.

However, in Macs without a CD/DVD, and post-Lion, up to Mavericks, there is no such setting available. Neither iTunes 11, nor System Preferences 10.9 present a setting to disable this annoyance.

Some say to disable the iTunes Helper from Users & Groups -> Login Items, but this appears to have no effect.

Is there another way to change this behavior?

Also posted on Reddit.

Also posted on Apple Discussions.

Solution 1:

I'm on a MBP with osx 10.9.2. Disabling iTunes in "CD and DVD" preferences does not help. Just renaming iTunes to something else does not work.

The service "Remote Control Daemon", rdc, is responsible for delivering commands to (for example) iTunes. Use this script, iTunesPatch. This script modifies the actual binary for rdc to inhibit the command it sends to start iTunes, which means that all other functions of rdc still works as expected.

Solution 2:

Have you tried removing permissions from the Remote Control Daemon?

sudo chmod -x /System/Library/CoreServices/rcd.app/Contents/MacOS

(there was a similar thread on Apple Discussions)