Q: Spotlight & Maverick

Open Spotlght preferences and click on the Privacy tab. Drag your startup volume into the window. This stops Spotlight from indexing that drive. This also stops any searching by you and by Time Machine.

Will software updates from App Store still work after disabling Spotlight from the install drive?

Yes. Spotlight is just a search engine. Without it you won't be able to search for something on your drives or search for items in your Time Machine backups.

I was asking because E.Moore's post (Dec 5) in https://discussions.apple.com/message/24499835#24499835 indicates that Software Updates in App Store could be prevented by setting the Spotlight privacy option on that software.

It would be interesting to know what subsystems depend on Spotlight in Mavericks.

I'm sorry, but your link does not go to a related discussion.

I'm not aware of an ability to set a privacy option for a program. Dragging an item into the Privacy window of Spotlight Preferences stops Spotlight from searching the location. In that case Software Update will not be able to locate software for which an update is available. If that's what you have in mind, then that is part of Spotlight's function - anything that involves searching.

You can turn off the options for automatic updates in App Store preferences such as notification and automatic downloads, etc. Likewise, on the App Store's Update page you can hide available updates if you don't want to install them and don't wish to have them displayed.

Thanks for your answer Kappy. I am sorry for posting a wrong url there. The issue with updates was slightly more complicated. Original problem there was that iMovie 10.x update was incompatible with my hardware but updates were still pushing it to my iMac rendering the automated updated useless. I try again to post the link here:

hide update in App Store

Hopefully that link leads to the discussion I was referring to. I wish this forum had an link-icon or referring system so that I could point to the exact post somehow. Anyway the post is dated December 5th and is written by E.Moore.

I beg your pardon, Tuffe, for posting these here, but I'd like to get to the bottom of this all.

Thanks for any readers for bearing with me.

As stated in that topic you should not be prompted to install an incompatible update. That should not happen unless you have an OS X version the software is compatible with. I'm not sure why that would happen. I suppose you could have a dysfunctional installation in which case a full reinstall may be worthwhile.

If this is a problem with App Store, then you might read this: Troubleshooting the Mac App Store. I don't know if this is useful:

The Mac App Store Debug Menu:

1. Quit App Store [ App Store ] File… Quit or [ ⌘Q ]
2. Open Terminal
3. defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true
4. Relaunch App Store

Oh, it was a bug in iMovie 10.0.0. Apple fixed that in 10.0.1:

What's New in Version 10.0.1

• Allows iMovie to be installed on computers with some older video cards
• Addresses reliability issues when updating projects and events from previous versions of iMovie

- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imovie/id408981434?mt=12

Also, about Spotlight and App Store, I found this laying around Internet:

mdfind kMDItemAppStoreHasReceipt=1

- http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120731002309128

I do not know if that metadata attribute is used by the update system, or if it is just another extra bit of data for some other purposes.

Well, 10.0.1 is the current version for Mavericks. But, if you've installed it then you should not continue to get update notifications unless you have copies of it on other volumes or in other locations. In this case App Store will continue to show the update until all found copies have been updated.

As far as the metadata is concerned it simply means that the receipt was found on the volume. Beyond this I am not really equipped to answer. I'm not a Spotlight expert beyond basic understanding.

I think you mean Maverics OS X 10.9.1. iMovie 10.0.1 is the current version of iMovie. The App Store update for iMovie 10.0.0 was flawed and it's installer kept exiting with error "Incompatible hardware for this version..." or something.

Thanks again for your advice, I take your word on that disabling Spotlight has no effect on App Store updates. I will bookmark this thread and report back if I learn different. I am not about to disable Spotlight for me, but I keep helping others and might face setups where Spotlight is off or need to be turned off.