After 5 years of hiatus, the SD card slot finally made a return on the MacBook Pro 2021 alongside the MagSafe connector and HDMI 2.0 port. The SD card slot is a boon for professional photographers and videographers as it allows them to quickly transfer photos and videos on the go without needing an adapter. However, it appears some MacBook Pro 2021 users are having issues with the card reader.

According to various user reports on MacRumors forums, the SD card slot on both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro 2021 models is not performing as expected. In some cases, the MacBook Pro doesn’t seem to recognize the SD card at all while in other cases, users are noticing slower read and write speeds, random crashing, and other oddities.

As one user notes:

"It's very frustrating. I was hoping that import from SD card including a preview of images would be quick on my new 14" MBP. I have a fairly new 64GB SD card which had been working fine. But Photos on the MBP using the internal SD card slot takes minutes to show photos and sometimes crashes half way through. Sometimes the Finder crashes too."

There doesn’t seem to be a common theme around the issue, with users experiencing issues regardless of brand, type, capacity, or format of SD cards. Formating the SD card doesn't seem to solve the issue. Users also say that the same cards that don't work through the dedicated SD card slot work just as fine when connected over a USB Type C dongle. It's unclear whether this is a hardware or software issue.

"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," writes MacRumors forum member Wilberforce. 

Apple has reportedly told some users that it's aware of the issue and that a software fix is on the way.

Have you noticed similar issues while using an SD card on your 2021 MacBook Pro? Let us know in the comments below.