How to disable spotlight index for specific folder in Mac OS X?


i just learned how to disable spotlight index for specific folder at my mac machine. While spotlight keep indexing my external harddisk and new folder i just copied from network drive, my Mac machine temperature increase. To prevent this happen again, i found the way to disable spotlight index for specific folder.

Follow the steps below to disable spotlight index for a folder:-

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  • Go to System Preferences, click on Spotlight
  • Go to Privacy tab and click + to add the folder that you want to disable for index
  • Once you added the folder, spotlight will not index the folder anymore.
    * You can add your external harddisk to the list but it wont be permanent.




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2 Responses to “How to disable spotlight index for specific folder in Mac OS X?”

  1. CHol says:

    Using Spotlight’s Privacy feature prevents Spotlight from indexing AND searching in the “private” folder/volume. If you only want to prevent indexing (because it is a massive processor hog), go into Terminal and enter the command:
    sudo mdutil -a -i off
    If you wish to periodically re-index your HD, you can turn it back on:
    sudo mdutil -a -i on

    Any suggestions on how to manage Spotlight without Terminal would be appreciated.

  2. @CervEdin says:

    Thanks,
    My Mac has been trying to constantly index my external NTFS drive & it’s been a pain in the ass; majorly slowing my system down & wearing out my hard-drive.
    OSX sucks sometimes

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