You may want to turn off Spotlight to increase system performance or to prevent it from indexing personal data. Here’s how to do it under Mac OS X.
Launch Terminal from the Utilites folder.
To disable Spotlight, type the following and press Return:
% sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
To disable it permanently, type this instead:
% sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
To enable Spotlight type the following and press Return:
% sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
To enable it permanently, type this instead:
% sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
For instructions on how to do this in Mac OS X Leopard, see How to completely disable Spotlight.
Last modified August 30, 2011
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I know but what do u need 2 do after that?
>:p
Don’t you still have it backward? There’s no /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist on the Tiger (10.4) machines I’m looking at, but there is one on the Leopard (10.5) machine.
First: Doesn’t work (in 10.5.1)
sysadm[~]$ sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
Password:
launchctl: Error unloading: com.apple.metadata.mds
Any ideas? Yes, I typed the admin password correctly.
Second, there’s a typo, last line:
For instructions on how to do this in Mac OS X Leopard, see
^^^^^^^
How to completely disable Spotlight.
That should say Tiger, no?