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Completely disable Spotlight
- Thread starter rmger
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Try the Terminal command at this page to disable it completely. The command there is from Mavericks, and I have not tested it in Yosemite.
Here is the command from the article.
Code:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
You can also try adding your "Macintosh HD" (or whatever is your boot drive) on the Privacy tab on Spotlight settings. It will warn you about search not working properly.
This won't prevent it from indexing other drives though, such as external ones.
This won't prevent it from indexing other drives though, such as external ones.
This terminal command disables spotlight from indexing:
sudo mdutil -a -i off
There are also apps out there that can help.
"Spotless" used to work -- don't know if it works with Yosemite.
There is an app called "Deeper" which can do this, as well.
sudo mdutil -a -i off
There are also apps out there that can help.
"Spotless" used to work -- don't know if it works with Yosemite.
There is an app called "Deeper" which can do this, as well.
Do you use the App Store?
Do you use LaunchPad?
Do you use Time Machine?
They all require Spotlight.
Just because you don't think you use it, doesn't mean you should break it.
OK, so what is the truth of the matter here? What are the side effects of making Spotlight go away completely using the various Terminal commands? Is there an Apple source that spells this out? Some say the side effect is simply that all the annoyances of Spotlight go away, others such as the quote above say bad things will happen because other apps use Spotlight to do their (necessary) jobs. I actively dislike Spotlight, never use it directly, and would very much like to disable it completely, but I keep it going because I cannot get a straight answer to this question.
If you never use, what's to dislike? That little menu bar magnifying glass isn't in your face.
I removed the Spotlight menu bar icon a long time ago. I have had to rebuild Spotlight's indexes several times on both Mavericks and Yosemite systems to fix problems with the beast, and I must live with Spotlight's (well, mdsworker and its minions) churning in the background beating on the system HD and eating CPU cycles. If for no other reason than here's yet another beast doing things on my system that I don't want and don't need. At least I think I don't need it, which is why I ask this question.
