How to completely disable Spotlight
March 22nd, 2007 - Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks, How to
We’re big fans of Spotlight here at OS X Daily, but we realize it’s not everyones cup of tea. If you’re someone who dislikes Spotlight enough to want it disabled completely then this is the guide for you. What you’ll need is some basic knowledge of the command line and a command line text editor (we’ll use nano in this example, perhaps the easiest). Note that some other Mac OS X features and programs are based on Spotlight’s search abilities, therefore some applications could behave abnormally if you disable Spotlight, particularly in search functions.
Disabling Spotlight
- Launch Terminal and type the following:
sudo nano /etc/hostconfig - Navigate using the arrow keys down the following entry:
SPOTLIGHT=-YES- - Change
SPOTLIGHT=-YES-toSPOTLIGHT=-NO- - Save /etc/hostconfig by hitting Control-O and the return key, next hit Control-X to exit the nano editor
- Next, you’ll want to disable the index by typing the following in the Terminal:
mdutil -i off / - And to erase the current Spotlight index, type:
mdutil -E / - That’s pretty much it, on your next reboot, Spotlight will be completely disabled.
Re-Enable Spotlight
- If you want to enable Spotlight again, follow the same steps as above, but change
SPOTLIGHT=-NO-toSPOTLIGHT=-YES- - and then type
mdutil -i on /in the Terminal - Reboot, and Spotlight is back as usual
Repair a Broken Spotlight
Is Spotlight broken and not working for you? Read our fix Spotlight guide here
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Comments:
Comments: 9
Comment from hmills
Time: March 22, 2007, 11:27 pm
why would you possibly want to turn off spotlight, the best feature in osx??
Comment from anon
Time: March 23, 2007, 5:52 am
Speaking of spotlight, I cannot wait until mdfind is more powerful.
Pingback from Mac Info » Blog Archive » Jak vypnout/zapnout Spotlight
Time: June 14, 2007, 12:09 pm
[…] Zdroj: OSXDaily […]
Comment from Ladeda
Time: September 3, 2007, 5:26 am
You might want to turn off spotlight for a couple of reasons.
1. performance, removing spotlight overhead on a low-end system
2. privacy, making it more difficult for a script to harvest personal information
Comment from mike
Time: November 9, 2007, 11:55 am
also, quicksilver is much better
Pingback from OS X Leopard: Enable/Disable Spotlight | Technipages
Time: November 26, 2007, 9:43 pm
[…] For instructions on how to do this in Mac OS X Leopard, see How to completely disable Spotlight. […]
Comment from Yost
Time: December 21, 2007, 9:20 am
So I’ve gone through with this and for some reason spotlight just won’t go away. I’ve done it for the root drive and also my two external partitions, just modifying the / on the end to a /volumes/etc. It is still in my menu bar and when I accidentally click on it mds kicks in and starts taking up 80-90% of my cpu power. After I kill mds it’s all fine, but it’s bothersome to think that I didn’t actually get rid of it. My /etc/hostconfig reads NO for spotlight upon opening. Any suggestions?
Pingback from Leopard langsam? Spotlight kann schuld sein | macophilia
Time: January 16, 2008, 3:15 pm
[…] Angeblich soll diese Lösung unter Leopard nicht funktionieren, hier wird eine andere Lösung diskutiert. Bei mir hat sie funktioniert. […]
Comment from indroo
Time: February 5, 2008, 10:01 pm
The easy way to disable spotlight is by setting its preference to prevent from searching on certain folder (or HD or external HD if any) on the Privacy Tab and uncheck all category on Search Result tab. It will stop indexing immediatelly.
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