{"id":6014,"date":"2008-07-30T09:18:02","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T08:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/mac-tip-shut-down-spotlight\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:28:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:28:50","slug":"mac-tip-shut-down-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/mac-tip-shut-down-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Mac tip &#8211; Shut down Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2008\/07\/spotlight_icon.jpg\" alt=\"Spotlight\" align=\"right\" \/>I&#8217;ve always said that Spotlight is a brilliant tool and something I simply can&#8217;t live without. Whether launching an application, looking for a file or just checking through my mail, I just need to use Spotlight. Remembering the times when the Apple search function wasn&#8217;t around, doing all these tasks was just a little bit more tedious and inexorably involved having to search through files. I&#8217;ve already written previously on Spotlight, giving you a tip on how to use it with <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/mac-tip-combine-cover-flow-and-spotlight\/\">Cover Flow<\/a>, how to <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/repairing-spotlight-in-your-mac\/\">repair<\/a> it or giving you a list of <a href=\"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/spotlight-alternatives-best-launchers-for-mac\/\">alternative launchers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As effective as Spotlight is, it isn&#8217;t error proof, especially when you consider that it&#8217;s literally on all the time, analyzing and indexing files. As said before, I&#8217;ve already covered how to repair Spotlight if something goes wrong with it. But what if it&#8217;s still not functioning properly and giving you a hard time? Your last resort is to shut it down completely.<\/p>\n<p>Look for the two following files and move them to a safe place, from where they can easily be recovered. Do not erase them!<\/p>\n<p>\/System\/Library\/LaunchAgents\/com.apple.Spotlight.plist<br \/>\n\/System\/Library\/LaunchDaemons\/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist<\/p>\n<p>Then reboot your system so that <code>launchd<\/code> does not try to start them. Normally since the files are not there anymore Spotlight will not be able to perform its indexing tasks. Take a look every now and then to make sure your system hasn&#8217;t recreated the files. If so, make sure to move them to another safe place. Once you think it&#8217;s time to relaunch Spotlight, simple put the files back in their destination.<\/p>\n<p>[Via: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macosxhints.com\/article.php?story=20071102215912892&amp;query=stop%2Bspotlight\">Macosxhints<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always said that Spotlight is a brilliant tool and something I simply can&#8217;t live without. Whether launching an application, looking for a file or just checking through my mail, I just need to use Spotlight. Remembering the times when the Apple search function wasn&#8217;t around, doing all these tasks was just a little bit &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/mac-tip-shut-down-spotlight\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Mac tip &#8211; Shut down Spotlight&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-6014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335955,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions\/335955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=6014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}