Turn off Spotlight while on battery

[qbiq]

Like the title, is it possible to turn of spotlight indexing while you are on battery power?

 

[switon]

RE: spotlight indexing...

Like the title, is it possible to turn of spotlight indexing while you are on battery power?

Hi qbig,

You can turn on/off Spotlight indexing using the "mdutil" terminal commands. See the manpages "man mdutil" for documentation.

To turn off indexing on all volumes, do:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

To turn on indexing on all volumes, do:

sudo mdtutil -a -i on

Of course, as I'm sure you already know, a number of other apps use Spotlight indexing in order to operate. For instance, Time Machine knows what to backup and what not to backup based upon the indexing of Spotlight.

Regards,
Switon

 

[GGJstudios]

Like the title, is it possible to turn of spotlight indexing while you are on battery power?

Once Spotlight has done the initial indexing of your drive, it won't use much resources to keep the index updated, so disabling it won't make much, if any, impact on your battery life.

There are many factors that impact your battery life. See the BATTERY LIFE FROM A CHARGE section of the following link for details, including tips on how to maximize your battery life.

The link below should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you take the time to read it.

Apple Notebook Battery FAQ​

 

[qbiq]

Thanks, need to do some scripting for this.

 

[benwiggy]

Once Spotlight has done the initial indexing of your drive, it won't use much resources to keep the index updated, so disabling it won't make much, if any, impact on your battery life.

Seconded.
It might be worthwhile for you (the OP) to look at Activity Monitor, and see how much CPU and Disk Activity is being caused by Spotlight (mdworker is the process name).

Unless you've got Spotlight running wild and continually indexing, but that's another problem.

Of all the things to be looking at for battery savings: this isn't one of them. Turning off Spotlight means you can't search for anything in the Finder or in Mail.

 

[switon]

RE: Okay, okay...

Hi guys, (and by "guys" I mean it in the midwestern fashion of meaning both males and females)

Yes, I agree that switching off Spotlight normally will not affect battery life much, ... except when it does (say by trying to index a new drive).

Nevertheless I do, on occasion, turn off Spotlight indexing on particular drives when I have other things going on and don't want "mds" or "mdworker" also running.

Regards,
Switon