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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 Tiger.

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.

4 Comments so far »

  1. by Dan, on December 22 2007 @ 7:20 pm

     

    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?

  2. by admin, on December 23 2007 @ 12:43 am

     

    You’re right, and thanks Dan. I had been writing so many articles for Leopard, I forgot that this one was for Tiger. I have made changes to reflect this. If you need changes for Leopard, see the other link I supplied.

  3. by Elliot Wilen, on April 5 2009 @ 2:25 pm

     

    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.

  4. by OS X Tiger: Enable/Disable Spotlight | Technipages | LastJediMaster, on June 17 2009 @ 10:38 pm

     

    [...] Spotlight | Technipages Published on June 18, 2009 in Local. Tags: No Tags. OS X Tiger: Enable/Disable Spotlight | TechnipagesYou may want to turn off Spotlight to increase system performance or to prevent it from indexing [...]

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