How To Disable (Or Enable) Spotlight

8/14/2014 How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Mac OS X Mavericks & Mountain Lion
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Mac OS X Mavericks & Mountain Lion
Dec 10, 2011 - 53 Comments
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Completely disabling and reenabling Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS
X Mavericks can be done with the help of the Terminal. The following command unloads the
Spotlight mds agent from launchd, thereby preventing the daemon from running or indexing
any drives entirely.
Open up the Terminal (found in

/Applications/Utilities/) and enter the
following commands based on the
need to either disable or reenable
Spotlight indexing. This will effect
indexing on all drives connected to the
Mac.
Disable Spotlight
The primary method is using launchctl,
this will require the administrative
password:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
Another approach is to use the older indexing method of “sudo mdutil -a -i off” which turns Find us on Facebook
off indexing only, but more on that in a minute. OS X Daily

Like
Reenable Spotlight
The guaranteed way to reenable Spotlight is to reload it into launchd using launchctl: 47,084 people like OS X Daily.
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
Again, the alternate approach is the indexing related “sudo mdutil -a -i on” command, but that
method can throw the “Spotlight server is disabled” error and not allow you to turn it back on.
If you run into that problem, use the sudo launchctl load command instead to enable both Facebook social plugin
indexing and Spotlight.

OSXDaily
With Spotlight reloaded launchd, the mds agent will immediately start running again to reindex Urmărește +1
the filesystem. Depending on the amount of changes and new files since the last time MDS
+ 5.361
ran, this can take quite a while. You can verify that MDS is running through Activity Monitor or
by pulling down the Spotlight menu to see an “Indexing Drive Name” progress bar. Don’t be
surprised to discover that MDS, mdworker, and the accompanying Spotlight processes take
up CPU and use a fair amount of disk I/O as they reindex the drive, that is completely normal
especially on initial reindexing after it’s been reenabled again. Simply waiting for it to finish is
the best course of action.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/12/10/disable-or-enable-spotlight-in-mac-os-x-lion/ 1/12
Another option is to selectively disable Spotlight indexing of specific drives or folders by

excluding them from the index, that is much easier to do and does not involve the
command line at all, and instead you only need to drag & drop items into the Spotlight control
panel.
Use whichever method is most appropriate for your needs. Spotlight is a powerful search tool
for the file system and also works great as an application launcher, so it’s often best to
selectively exclude items rather than to disable the entire service. Nonetheless, there are
cases where turning Spotlight off completely makes sense, and knowing it can easily
reenabled by using the command discussed above makes the process easy to reverse
should the need arrise.
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Mountain Lion
Posted by: AJ in Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks, Troubleshooting
53 Comments
» Comments RSS Feed
John says:
December 10, 2011 at 5:37 am
Is there any performance improvements when spotlight is disabled?
Reply
cliff says:
^ any performance gains?

Also, what are all those icons in your screenshots… man that’s a lot of apps you have running. (may
grab a few, so let me know what they all are)
Reply
Ovidiu says:
any chance to get rid of the search/spotlight icon top/right?
Reply
Juan says:
December 10, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Yeah there is
Open terminal and type
sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search
press enter (type your password in if you have to) and then type
killall SystemUIServer
Should be gone now !:)
Reply
Ovidiu says:
worked, thanks for the help!
Reply
Gabe says:
is there a way to index a connected network server?
Reply
Sue Dunham says:

Why would you want to do this?
Reply
Rick says:
I use Alfred instead and never use Spotlight so having it indexing my drives on connect and
disconnect and once a week is annoying. Without a special use case, you wouldn’t want to do
that though.
Reply
Joseph Redfern says:

June 20, 2012 at 8:03 am
But Alfred uses Spotlights data?
Reply
ken says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:44 am
just realized this. glad the command was there on how to enable it again
Reply
Ovidiu says:
I am using quicksilver so spotlight isn’t needed.
Reply
James Ludtke says:

I know this is off the topic, but I have tried to get Spotlight to work in Lion, and I never succeeded.
My problem is that spotlight finds items, which do not exist. If I search for a set of characters, which
are almost certain not to exist on my computer, such as “h3%n9q”, Spotlight finds hundreds of files
if searching by name or by content.
I re-indexed Spotlight, disabled Spotlight, re-enabled Spotlight, deleted all cashes in Lion, deleted
Spotlight preference file. Did this using Spotlight preference panel or Terminal.
I once got Spotlight to work for about three days, then the same old problem was back.
Anybody else has the “find-nonexisting-items” problem?
Reply
Will says:
I’ve never heard of this issue, have you tried deleting all the preferences and caches? Do you
have FileVault encryption enabled? If you’ve been upgrading from Mac OS X version to Mac OS
X version, there could be some legacy preferences or otherwise corrupting Spotlights index and
causing it to behave like that, the solution may be to backup and reinstall Lion, as annoying as
that is.
Reply
James Ludtke says:

Will, thanks for your suggestions.

I do not use encryption. I did a clean install of Lion–I think because I installed over the
internet as anybody else. I don’t remember if the Internet install gave me a clean install
option. I always used a clean install for new systems installed from a DVD.
A wile ago I set my normal HD to be excluded, and set my backup HD for search. After
indexing was complete, I had the same problem. Confirming the problem is not caused
by a faulty HD. I will use another HD just to be certain, just in case the bug got copied to
the backup drive.
Then I tried something else. I searched Spotlight using the terminal, e.g. mdfind h3%n9q.
Works OK, no files found. Also finds files with valid search input.
I guess this means the Spotlight database is OK, and the problem is in the Spotlight
interface. Strange! BTW, I get the same bad Spotlight results in searches from a window
as I do searching from the Spotlight menu.
Reply
James Ludtke says:

Or the Spotlight interface is connected to some phantom index.
Reply
James Ludtke says:

Following up on the last idea, I did a terminal ls.

MacPro:~ Udo$ sudo du -m /.Spotlight-V100 produced this:
570 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/308A3197-7E1D-45CE-B998-
6E40C7C2CB9C
31 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/BEDA5A58-9744-4E2D-A693-
24F43A3884E7
601 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores
601 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1
4 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/7D6EA8C8-E0E8-4184-85F6-
39EE2B5A52B2/Cache/0000/0000/000a
39EE2B5A52B2/Cache/0000/0000/000b
39EE2B5A52B2/Cache/0000
39EE2B5A52B2/Cache
39EE2B5A52B2/journals.live
39EE2B5A52B2/journals.repair
39EE2B5A52B2/journals.scan
1049 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/7D6EA8C8-E0E8-4184-85F6-39EE2B5A52B2
1049 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2
1649 /.Spotlight-V100
Is this typical? What is Store V1 and Store V2?
MW says:
Store V1 and Store V2 are normal part of Spotlight, they’re just metadata
cache
James Ludtke says:

I did try another HD, which contains only data files (no system installed). Spotlight
works Ok. So, the problem is caused by something on the HD, which contains the
system.
Reply
James Ludtke says:

Finally solved the problem.
I had run Apple disk repair before, and it had not fixed the problem. Running
it today (OS X 10.7.2) it fixed the Spotlight problem. Message was: “Updated
boot support partitions for the volume as required”.
Kevin says:
If you on SSD, there is no point of doing this. Just for the performances.
Reply
Neena says:
It is amazing how customizable OS X really is.
I have not needed to disable Spotlight for any reason. I would like to know why people might want to
do this.
That being said – it is good to know that it can be done.
Reply
Andrew says:
Well, I had to disable it because it would start eating up 100% of my cpu quite frequently, and
was nearly impossible to stop. Once it restarted, it was back at it. It never would “finish”. This
would happen a few times a week, and I can’t have that when I’m working. So I had to disable
it.
Also, some people frequently use removable drives. Spotlight is stupid enough to try to index
them. It just go to be too much of a pain to get to behave properly, and it has no *meaningful*
controls or options. It’s basically a black box, and when it stops doing what you want your only
choice is to disable it. You can’t just say “only index this volume”, or “prompt first” or “only
index these folders.” I have what seems like millions of dev related files scattered around… I
can’t just exclude them all, i only want to exclude some of them, but if one folder is inside
another… ouch, out of luck.
But really, it was the 100% cpu and disk thrashing that finally did it for me.
Reply
Juan says:
I have a suggestion for the article:
You should mention that this will disable spotlight ACROSS the OS (using the search tool in a finder
window won’t turn any results). Even if I am an avid Alfred user, I think that the search tool in finder
windows is pretty helpful so I had to rush and re-enable spotlight to get that functionality back.
Alternatively, if you just want to remove the spotlight icon you can open terminal and type :
sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search
and then type
killall SystemUIServer
This will effectively remove the spotlight icon from the menu bar, yet you’ll keep the functionality.
Reply
Hide the Spotlight Menu Icon in Mac OS X Lion says:

[...] you are disabling Spotlight or just wanting to reduce menubar icon clutter, it’s
possible to hide the Spotlight icon. [...]
Reply
Disabilitare/abilitare Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion | iSpazio MAC says:

[...] Via | OSXDaily [...]
Reply
How to Exclude Hard Drives and Folders from Spotlight Index in Mac OS X says:
[...] is a much better approach than disabling Spotlight if all you want to do is hide certain
files from prying [...]
Reply
Apps slower than creeping death: server issue - MacNN Forums says:
February 23, 2012 at 9:32 am
[...] that easy to do otherwise). There are a couple of terminal commands which will kill
the function. How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion It's a lot to type, but
it worked. The alternate command is as follows: sudo mdutil -a -i off of [...]
Reply
Adrian says:
March 24, 2012 at 9:25 am
I try your code today on lion. But with error on launchctl. Any suggestion?
Reply
For now no spotlight.. says:

March 25, 2012 at 1:34 am
[...] How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion [...]
Reply
Isidoros Sklivanos says:

April 30, 2012 at 6:24 pm
my sad had better performance specially when running intensive apps like final cut pro with indexing
disable
Reply
Mike Laverick says:

May 29, 2012 at 6:22 am
You should know that disabling spotlight, also disables the search function in Outlook 2011…
Reply
JP Cooling says:
June 9, 2012 at 2:23 pm
I too used the relaunch code on Lion and it didn’t work. So be aware!
You can turn it off using info above but NOT back on. I have no idea what the correct coding is. I
regret turning it off.
Reply
JP Cooling says:
June 9, 2012 at 2:26 pm
To turn back on in Lion use in terminal:
sudo mdutil -a -i on
Reply
rich says:
Yep. Same for mountain lion.
doesnt work
sudo mdutil -a -i on
does
Reply
Adam says:
July 3, 2012 at 3:31 pm
I just wanted to add that disabling Spotlight will also disable the search function in Mail. I was really
scratching my head trying to figure out why Mail wasn’t finding anything in my emails, and then I
remembered I had disabled Spotlight. I re-enabled it and all is well again.
Reply
Grant Eagon says:

August 9, 2012 at 8:23 am
Disabling spotlight messes with downloads in app store. You will [at least] no longer be able to get
updates. You get a message saying:
“You have updates available for other accounts. To update this application, sign in to the account you
used to purchase it.”
If you have this issue, renable spotlight server and you’ll be good.
Reply
Troy says:
At least it allows Time Machine to function at reasonable speed after the disastrous 10.7.5 “upgrade”
Reply
Troy says:
At least it allows Time Machine to function at reasonable speed after the disastrous 10.7.5 “upgrade”
Reply
Andy says:
October 3, 2012 at 5:01 pm
Thanks for the workaround – with Spotlight disabled Time Machine is functioning normally again…
Hope Apple fix the problem with 10.7.5 soon.
Reply
Sam says:
October 4, 2012 at 7:46 am
I can’t enable spotlight. I get the following errors when I try both approaches sams-
macbook:LaunchDaemons samflower$ sudo launchctl load -w com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
launchctl: no plist was returned for: com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
launchctl: no plist was returned for: com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
nothing found to load
sams-macbook:LaunchDaemons samflower$ pwd

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
sams-macbook:LaunchDaemons samflower$ sudo mdutil -a -i off
Spotlight server is disabled.

sams-macbook:LaunchDaemons samflower$ sudo mdutil -a -i on
Any help would be much appreciated! Its driving me mental….
Reply
ungars says:
Reply
Geoffrey says:
October 31, 2012 at 5:25 pm
I tried the method for disabeling my spotlight while I downloaded from another drive but when I tried
to turn it back on I got this error…
launchctl: Error unloading: com.apple.metadata.mds
Any advice?
Reply
wiretap says:
January 12, 2013 at 10:12 pm
Use Onyx (free) and you can turn it off/on any time.
Reply
andy selby says:

January 25, 2013 at 12:34 am
I’ve been disabling Spotlight for years as it always and consistently ends up running amok. Things
will be okay for a while, but then out of nowhere “mdsworker” and other processes related to it will
start going crazy. The HD never stops working and the searches themselves get glacial. The amount
of work the process taxes the system with gets more and more ridiculous over time. The difference
between a machine running Spotlight and one not running it is incredible. I really don’t care about the
App Store, not while I’m still in Snow Leopard. Maybe it will be a problem when I have to go to Lion or
ML someday. For now however, it can go back to the dark hell hole from whence it came.
I’ve used all the above described terminal methods to do so. However, the most fail safe method
(and easiest to recover from) is using and app called Spotless. Yes, it is a GUI front end to all those
commands, but it does a spectacular job of keeping me out of the terminal. That and Onyx to disable
the Spotlight icon and my MacBook Pro runs so much more calmly and stably. The only thing you
really lose is the App Store, which means nothing to me. I love Apple, but draconian moves like that
crap hole make me wonder where the vision is coming from these days.
Reply
Charlie Brown says:

January 28, 2013 at 5:07 pm
I couldn’t agree more, Andy. It’s interesting because I always liked these system-indexing
services. For example, I just love (yes, I DO!) how Windows 7 indexes my main folders, even
though I have very good control over it. Spotlight seems to depend on the weather to do its job.
Works great for some, and for others, like me and you, it’s near disaster. I’d rather keep on
good and old Locate/UpdateDB (recently came from Linux), most of the time my searches are
for file names.
But what it’s better: even if it doesn’t come ready-made in the OS, we can choose!
Thank you all of you guys, great hint about disabling the search button and also for your
opinions.
Reply
Avioli says:
November 21, 2013 at 5:41 am
It is a file or a set of files that it tries to index, but it is corrupt or the reader it uses is
buggy. Many apps add to the ability of Spotlight to index their proprietary file formats. I
once had a single JPG file that was corrupt and Spotlight was eating my CPU and Disk IO
to index it, until there was no free space on the boot disk. I searched through the console
log files and found it was an image. But still it was hard to track down. Another time I had
an MKV video file that was giving Spotlight headaches, thus Perian.prefpane was the
problem in my case. So… don’t blame the butler.
Reply
megadr01d says:
February 5, 2013 at 4:54 pm
If you just want to prevent indexing on some HDs (for example, stop indexing your external and keep
indexing your boot volume, for Mail search functionality, etc.) just create a new empty file at each
HD’s root, named
.metadata_never_index
You can of course add your HDs to the Privacy tab of Spotlight’s Preferences but I found it doesn’t
work with some HDs (eg. FAT32).
Reply
MacCentric says:
I recovered a failing partition to a new drive. It looked like most everything copied except for some
garageband files. But on restarting from the new drive, spotlight wasn’t even there. So I repaired
permissions, installed the 10.7.5 combo update, and ran Onyx. After restart, Spotlight icon was back,
but didn’t return any results. I tried the following in Terminal:
To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.
Password:
com.apple.metadata.mds: Already loaded
Peters-MacBook-Pro:~ peter$ sudo mdutil -E /

Peters-MacBook-Pro:~ peter$ sudo launchctl load -w
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
com.apple.metadata.mds: Already loaded

Peters-MacBook-Pro:~ peter$ sudo mdutil -a -i on
Password:
Any ideas where to go from here?
Reply
ungars says:
mdutil(1) BSD General Commands Manual mdutil(1)
NAME
mdutil — manage the metadata stores used by Spotlight
SYNOPSIS
mdutil [-pEsav] [-i on | off] mountPoint …
DESCRIPTION
The mdutil command is useful for managing the metadata stores for mounted volumes.
The following options are available:
-p Spotlight caches indexes of some network devices locally. This option requests that a
local caches be flushed to the appropriate network device.
-E This flag will cause each local store for the volumes indicated to be erased. The stores
will be rebuilt if appropriate.
-i on | off
Sets the indexing status for the provided volumes to on or off. Note that indexing may be
delayed due to low disk space or other conditions.
-s Display the indexing status of the listed volumes.
-a Apply command to all volumes.
-v Print verbose information when available.
SEE ALSO
mdfind(1), mds(8), mdimport(1)
Mac OS X September 1, 2005 Mac OS X
(END)
Reply
MacCentric says:
Also, when I tried to to add/remove the HD from the Spotlight privacy prefpane and was told:
Privacy List Error
The item couldn’t be added or removed because you don’t have the appropriate permissions.
I’m guessing this will likely end in a clean system install, but I’m open to suggestions.
Reply
ungars says:
There is no file /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
in LION ?
Reply
MArC says:
March 12, 2013 at 8:41 pm
Why is it, when someone using Mac OS asks a perfectly valid technical operating system question,
who is presumably interested in Unix/BSD security or tweaking their system for speed, battery life,
stability, efficiency or whatever, on Mac forums or countless Blogs, – why is there always one who
(obviously being ignorant or not interested in the technical aspects of computer operating systems
themselves) decides to pipe up and type out with something unhelpful like ‘ leave it alone ‘ ‘why
would you want to do something like that ‘or ‘ dont touch it ‘ ? while knowing nothing ?
This mindset is that of an ignorant smug ‘Apple fan’ who think Apple know best and let Apple do all
their thinking. its smug, unhelpful, small-minded lazy thinking, zealot-like in the extreme and makes
non Apple users laugh at their ignorance, while making real tech savvy people irritated beyond belief.
99% of this philistine mindset is curiously only in the Apple world, and is makes them seem foolish,
most folks, while knowing little or nothing say nothing and read to learn, but ‘dont touch it’ zealots are
oddly very vocal. that say an empty can rattles the loudest.. by the way Apple zealots, trust your
government. stay in line. shut p and dont ask questions.
Reply
Martin says:
March 22, 2013 at 12:39 am
Thanks, useful. I had a corrupt file system that I could not repair because spotlight kept causing a
kernel panic as soon as it tried to mount. Completely killing spotlight allowed the system to be
repaired.
However, I must point-out. Your sentence “This will effect indexing on all drives connected to the
Mac.” is a perfect example of the difference between affect and effect and has the oposite meaning
from the one you intend. You meant all indexing will be *affected* which is the same as saying NO
INDEXING will be *effected*!
Reply
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8/14/2014 How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Mac OS X Mavericks & Mountain Lion

How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Subscribe to OSXDaily

Like 47k Follow @OSXDaily

Open up the Terminal (found in

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

off indexing only, but more on that in a minute. OS X Daily

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

indexing and Spotlight.

Another option is to selectively disable Spotlight indexing of specific drives or folders by

Enjoy this tip? Subscribe to the OSXDaily newsletter to get more of

How to Completely Disable Spotlight

Mac OS X Lion includes live webpage previews in Spotlight

Disable Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

You may also like:

Posted by: AJ in Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks, Troubleshooting

Is there any performance improvements when spotlight is disabled?

^ any performance gains?

grab a few, so let me know what they all are)

any chance to get rid of the search/spotlight icon top/right?

Open terminal and type

sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search

Should be gone now !:)

worked, thanks for the help!

is there a way to index a connected network server?

Sue Dunham says:

Joseph Redfern says:

But Alfred uses Spotlights data?

I am using quicksilver so spotlight isn’t needed.

James Ludtke says:

if searching by name or by content.

Anybody else has the “find-nonexisting-items” problem?

James Ludtke says:

Will, thanks for your suggestions.

James Ludtke says:

Or the Spotlight interface is connected to some phantom index.

James Ludtke says:

Following up on the last idea, I did a terminal ls.

Is this typical? What is Store V1 and Store V2?

James Ludtke says:

James Ludtke says:

Finally solved the problem.

It is amazing how customizable OS X really is.

That being said – it is good to know that it can be done.

I have a suggestion for the article:

sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search

and then type

Hide the Spotlight Menu Icon in Mac OS X Lion says:

Disabilitare/abilitare Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion | iSpazio MAC says:

[...] Via | OSXDaily [...]

For now no spotlight.. says:

[...] How to Disable (or Enable) Spotlight in Mac OS X Lion [...]

Isidoros Sklivanos says:

Mike Laverick says:

regret turning it off.

To turn back on in Lion use in terminal:

Yep. Same for mountain lion.

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Grant Eagon says:

updates. You get a message saying:

used to purchase it.”

Hope Apple fix the problem with 10.7.5 soon.

launchctl: no plist was returned for: com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

nothing found to load