Questions About Disabling Spotlight

[mwheelerk]

I have questions regarding disabling Spotlight?

 

1) What is the purpose?

2) Do you lose any important functionality or is there any other downside to doing this?

3) How do you disable Spotlight?

 

[mwheelerk]

I have tried to do a little more research on this here and elsewhere. I do find instructions for command line entries and moving folders but I frankly am not comfortable doing this. Looking at Spotlight in Preferences there are two tab selections Search Results and Privacy. Does it help anything in unchecking all items under Search Results? Under Privacy you can click the add button and I could drag my Mac Mini, Music Library HDD and Back Up HDD icons into the window. This says it prevents Spotlight from searching these locations. Am I gaining the desired effect in this manner in preventing Spotlight activity?

 

I appreciate any help.

 

[bottlerocket]

1) the purpose is to reduce background processes. Spotlight uses CPU to index EVERYTHING on your drive so any time you add new files, Spotlight needs to index them in the background. This is the background work that makes OSXs search function so effective and can theoretically negatively impact sound quality.

 

2) There is a big downside if you use your Mac for something other than a music server. If you share it as your main computer, I would not disable spotlight because you will lose effective search functionality. If your Mac is dedicated to audio and maybe video and you don't need search, disable it. I don't miss it on my dedicated Mac, but I don't use that mac for anything other than audio and video.

 

Keep in mind Spotlight is a choice in your System Preferences. Have a look at it.

 

Also keep in mind that Audivarna will turn off Spotlight while you are playing back music. See the preferences in Audivarna. It then claims to turn it back on when you turn off Audivarna. This makes a lot of sense, because technically your Mac could resume indexing while you are not listening.

 

3) There is a good document on tweaking the Mac to limit background processes on this website. I can't find it at the moment.

 

 

[orgel]

Yes, if you're uncomfortable doing the command-line thing, adding all your volumes to Spotlight's privacy list will help significantly.

 

As I see it, the main reasons for disabling Spotlight on a music server are (1) eliminating unnecessary (or marginally necessary) background processes and (2) reducing unwanted disk activity. Adding all your volumes to Spotlight's privacy list addresses Reason 2, and really, having Spotlight still running but not indexing anything isn't likely to cause much of a problem in the way of sonic differences.

 

I don't think unchecking items under Spotlight's search-results settings will accomplish much. These settings just help to filter results when you do a Spotlight search, so you might as well leave checked whatever you think is pertinent to your searching needs.

 

Purists will likely recommend that you disable Spotlight completely, and it's true -- at least theoretically -- that the effects of a lot of little processes running in the background could cumulatively have an effect on sound quality at a certain point, but I doubt it would be easy on a recent-model Mac mini to discern the sonic differences between having Spotlight completely disabled or not. Getting rid of unwanted disk activity by stopping Spotlight from indexing gets rid of the big issue, IMO.

 

Note that if you keep Spotlight from indexing, any Spotlight searches will take significantly longer. If the mini is a dedicated music server, though, this shouldn't be much of an issue.

 

Also note that I've seen Spotlight "forget" privacy settings for ejectable volumes, so you may want to revisit your Spotlight preferences occasionally to make sure everything's still the way you want it to be.

 

--David

 

[mwheelerk]

Thanks for both replies.

 

[Dav9]

After hearing from someone that unchecking the Spotlight preferences didn't stop Spotlight from running I Spotless to turn it off (and back on if desired but I've left it off):

 

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/18141/spotless

 

Have you done the other free software mods to the mini that are available?

 

[ted_b]

An yes, I leave my music hdd's as private, and uncheck everything else.

 

http://www.ultrafi.biz/ (go to free optimization paper link)

http://www.channld.com/computeraudio.html (click computer tweaking)

http://www.sonicstudio.com/amarra/howtobuildaserver.html

 

[wgscott]

The main drawback I have found is that I can't use the (hated) App Store.app, which I occasionally need (like to update iPhoto).