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We’re big fans of Spotlight here at OS X Daily, but we realize it’s not everyones cup of tea. If you’re someone who dislikes Spotlight enough to want it disabled completely then this is the guide for you. What you’ll need is some basic knowledge of the command line and a command line text editor (we’ll use nano in this example, perhaps the easiest). Note that some other Mac OS X features and programs are based on Spotlight’s search abilities, therefore some applications could behave abnormally if you disable Spotlight, particularly in search functions.

Disabling Spotlight

1. Launch Terminal and type the following: sudo nano /etc/hostconfig
2. Navigate using the arrow keys down the following entry: SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
3. Change SPOTLIGHT=-YES- to SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
4. Save /etc/hostconfig by hitting Control-O and the return key, next hit Control-X to exit the nano editor
5. Next, you’ll want to disable the index by typing the following in the Terminal:
   mdutil -i off /
6. And to erase the current Spotlight index, type: mdutil -E /
7. That’s pretty much it, on your next reboot, Spotlight will be completely disabled.

Re-Enable Spotlight

1. If you want to enable Spotlight again, follow the same steps as above, but change SPOTLIGHT=-NO- to SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
2. and then type mdutil -i on / in the Terminal
3. Reboot, and Spotlight is back as usual

Repair a Broken Spotlight

Is Spotlight broken and not working for you? Read our fix Spotlight guide here

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