How to disable web search in Spotlight? (MacOS Sonoma 14.0)

[BuzzyBumblebee]

I hate web search in Spotlight. I hate the concept, I don't want to see it, I have never and will never use it so it just gets in the way. If I want to search on the web, I'll open a browser and search there.
See image 1, where an intrusive suggestion to search on the web is the first suggestion in Spotlight in Sonoma -- compare that with image 2, Spotlight search in Mojave, where there is no forced web search. I would like to remove that because it's useless to me. In fact, in the Sonoma settings (image 3) I do have web search disabled.

Image 1: Bad, what is Firefox doing there prompting me to search? Especially as the very first entry? Why put the most useless option at the top?! (Sonoma)

Image 2: Spotlight settings: I've disabled websites, so why is it present in Image 1? (Sonoma)

For comparison, this bug did not used to be present.

Image 3: Good, only shows me local files (Mojave)

Images 4 and 5: Mojave Spotlight settings for comparison:

Image 5: Mojave Spotlight settings continued.

Please, if you know any terminal hacks or whatever to get rid of the web search suggestion, share them. Thank you.

 

[smirking]

I've always hated this Spotlight automatic Web search feature myself. I had no idea you could turn it off like this so I just did. Yeah, it still presents a button I can press to trigger the search, but I can live with that. I just don't want the results cluttering up the info I'm really looking for.

 

[bogdanw]

Not a Sonoma only problem, it's been like this since Big Sur.
"Spotlight - How to Remove Web Search from Results"
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/spotlight-how-to-remove-web-search-from-results.2271616/

 

[BuzzyBumblebee]

I see, so there's no fix at all

 

[gantarone]

Try:
sudo mdutil -Ea and mdutil -ai off
end after
sudo mdutil -Ea and mdutil -ai on

 

[bogdanw]

Try:
sudo mdutil -Ea and mdutil -ai off
end after
sudo mdutil -Ea and mdutil -ai on

Wellcome to the forum! Please don’t post Terminal commands that have nothing to do with the subject discussed in this thread.

 

[gantarone]

Wellcome to the forum! Please don’t post Terminal commands that have nothing to do with the subject discussed in this thread.

if you go to terminal these two commands solve the spootlight problem!!!

 

[bogdanw]

if you go to terminal these two commands solve the spootlight problem!!!

No, they do not.
This thread is about how to disable web search in Spotlight.
The commands you posted are for volumes of the hard drive. More, they are not even correct.
See https://ss64.com/mac/mdutil.html

 

[BuzzyBumblebee]

I was going to ask how those solve it, I looked up the commands since I don't want to run something in Terminal if I have no idea what it does and I didn't see anything to do with Web Search. Thank you for the warning, bogdanw!

 

[johnny5quid]

I've noticed this too and I also use Firefox as my default browser. If I click on any spotlight link it searches in Google using Firefox.

But if I change my preferred search to DuckDuckGo (for example) in Safari preferences, the spotlight link will open using DuckDuckGo in Firefox.

So to me it looks like some deep integration between Safari to create that spotlight link which is passed along to the default browser...