The MacBook Pro’s SD card slot is giving some people headache

Some people are experiencing various problems with their MacBook Pro’s SD card slot, such as the inability to mount an SD card, unusually slow transfer speeds and more.

Apple's marketing image showing a side view of the 2021 MacBook Pro with the following ports, from left to right: SDXC card, USB-C and HDMI
Image credit: Apple

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Some 2021 MacBook Pro models have various issues with SD cards
  • Both 14″ and 16″ MacBook Pros are suffering from this problem
  • It’s unclear how widespread the issue is

Have MacBook Pro SD card issues? You’re not alone

The MacBook Pro’s SD card slot seems to be malfunctioning on an unknown percentage of these notebooks, with owners complaining about various issues like the inability to mount some SD cards at all. Read: Troubleshooting tips for when AirDrop isn’t working

According to multiple reports on MacRumors’ forums, Reddit and other online forums, the root cause of this issue is yet to be isolated because people are reporting a range of problems. Some owners are reporting being unable to mount SD cards while others can mount an SD card but aren’t able to view its contents in the Finder.

There are also cases when the SD card is mountable, but data transfer is very slow.

Making matters worse, affected customers are having these problems only with certain SD cards. For now, the problem doesn’t seem to be isolated to specific SD card vendors or models. This could be a hardware fault with a small percentage of MacBook Pro units because the same SD card works without hiccups with a third-party external card reader.

To be clear, posters clarified that they did format their SD using the same MacBook Pro that wouldn’t mount the card. According to user reports, the issues occur the most with SD card capacities below 128GB, but newer cards are reportedly affected as well.

Here’s what one of the posters wrote:

I tried many cards, and could find no pattern of brand, size, type, format, age. Seems to be completely random. The only thing that is consistent is that if a card works, it always works, and if a card does not work properly it never works properly. Reformatting, even to all other possible formats, makes no difference. Sandisk, Sony, Samsung, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, UHS-I, UHS-II, micro-SD, FAT32, exFAT, makes no difference. 100% of my cards work perfectly via a dongle.

Is your MacBook seeing an SD card plugged into it?

It’s unclear from these reports how widespread the SD card issue is. Apple is yet to acknowledge the problem, let alone comment on it. But you can be sure that, in case there’s a hardware fault with the SD card slot on some 2021 MacBook Pro units, that Apple will create a repair program to repair or replace these machines for free.