Is there an option to not use Photos on macOS to maintain/sync iOS photos?

I'm giving up. For over a year Photos on macOS says "_Preparing to import from ..._" in an infinite loop. None of the [try-everything suggestions](https://appletoolbox.com/photos-preparing-to-import-from-iphone/) actually works. At most, putting the phone in Airplane mode succeeds one time in 3-4, and even then it works very briefly. Syncing with Image Capture rather than Photos works, but then Photos takes over and restarts the loop. I upgraded iOS and macOS to no avail. I'd now like to use another mechanism. Manually using AirDrop for a few dozen photos/videos at a time is too tedious. It's also error-prone. I found (the hard way, of course) that dragging the photos from the Downloads folder to Photos adds the photos but the files must remain in Downloads. When you add a photo to Photos, Photos clearly does a hard link and not a soft link (as in ln -s). I know that Photos is built into macOS, at least the recent releases, and that it's not possible to remove it. I'm not even sure where the Photos.app folder is. It's not under /Applications. Is there an option to not use Photos on macOS to maintain/sync iOS photos? In other words, when I connect an iPhone to macOS using Thuderbolt, I'd like the Photos app to **not** launch. (Finding an app that syncs will be step #2; for now I'm asking about this step #1). In case it's relevant, I've been upgrading macOS in-place since Tiger. That by itself is likely a bad idea, but given how opaque iTunes, iPhotos (previously), and now Photos are in maintaining their databases, it's not too clear how I can copy music + photos/videos following a clean install.