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How Do I Disable Spotlight on Mac [macOS Sonoma Included]

How do I disable Spotlight completely on Mac? It's using up a lot of resources, and I never really use it, so I want to disable it. I never use it to access files, although I use it to launch applications.

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Brithny· Answered on Apr 10, 2024

How do I disable Spotlight on Mac? It's possible for you to disable Spotlight on Mac: disable it from Mac settings or run the Terminal command. Check out the steps below to disable Spotlight in Terminal:

Step 1. Open Terminal.

Step 2. Type sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist, and press 'Enter'.

Then you can disable the Spotlight on your Mac. But you should notice that Terminal commands can be dangerous if you are not an advanced computer user. Some commands in Mac Terminal can permanently delete files that can't recover Trash Mac to get them back, such as the rm command.

In this case, you can use professional data recovery software, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, to recover the files that were deleted by Mac Terminal accidentally.

Download for MacmacOS 14 - 10.9  Also Available for Windows

It can recover permanently deleted files Mac Terminal with 3 steps; check out the steps here:

Step 1. Install and open EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, and choose the partition that stores the deleted or lost files.

Step 2. Click 'Search for lost files', and the recovery software will scan all the data on the selected partition on your Mac.

Step 3. Select the recoverable date you want, click 'Recover' to get it back, and save it to a safe location on your hard drive.

Apart from disabling Spotlight on your Mac, you can customize it by the following steps:

Step 1. Click 'Spotlight' in the System Preferences window, then move to the Search Results section.

Step 2. Select what categories should appear in the Spotlight search results.

Use EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover deleted or lost files easily and quickly.

Tutorials on how to recover lost, deleted, or formatted data from HDD, SSD, USB, SD card, or other storage media on Windows and Mac.

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