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Donot Haveone Author

Level 1

107 points

Turn off spotlight super-slow indexing after upgrade to Lion?

My backup computer (2006 MBP) told me it needed 2 months to index the 500GB internal drive after upgrade to Lion (10.7.5) from Snow Leopard (10.6.8). I dragged the entire internal hard drive into the 'privacy'/do not index space for spotlight, and it's still telling me it needs 2 days to index my computer. There should quite literally be nothing left for it to index, but it still wants 3 days.

I've heard of slow indexing after upgrade, but this is ridiculous.

Any suggestions for how to (1) kill spotlight, at least transiently, so it will stop and let me use the beastie reasonably efficiently when I need it for a bit (like right now)? and (2) what could make the indexing so incredibly slow?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Oct 2, 2012 9:31 PM

24 replies

DoC_LoA

Level 1

0 points

Aug 29, 2013 6:49 AM in response to jeknight

This was perfect! I didn't even need to reboot, Spotlight stopped indexing immediately after pulling the drives icon into the privacy tab.

(In my case, it was an external drive that I was using for cloning of main drive/system before upgrading to ML.)

Thank you for sharing your wisdom!

DoC_LoA

Level 1

0 points

Aug 29, 2013 7:00 AM in response to jeknight

This helped me.

I had recently upgraded another system (MBP) and noticed it was a little sluggish.. It was spotlight working hard to do its job.. But I didn't need it to do so on an external drive. Using this method was the key!

This solved my problem.

Thank you again.

Sep 16, 2013 2:42 PM in response to jeknight

Thanks Mate, your procedure worked for me. Appreciated !

naquashv

Level 1

4 points

Nov 6, 2013 9:40 AM in response to Donot Haveone

http://www.coolestguidesontheplanet.com/downtown/spotlight-out-control-mac-os-x- mountain-lion-108

Feb 15, 2014 5:03 AM in response to jeknight

You just saved me from a very violent attack on the Mac - thanks!

Jun 4, 2014 8:11 AM in response to jeknight

Great ideas.... now, where the heck do I find the Spotlight perferences so I can edit them?

Thanks

497s

Jun 4, 2014 8:15 AM in response to 497Secrets

If you turn off the Mac and turn back on, then go immediately into system prefernces (via the apple icon top left) the spot light preferences are in there - you need to be quick before it starts to index them.

If you search turn off spotlight index in google it will come up with more detailed info

Jun 4, 2014 8:46 AM in response to Danieljgrimes

Thanks, that helped a lot

497s

dhhyde

Level 1

9 points

Jun 5, 2017 3:44 PM in response to jeknight

Helpful. Thanks.

Turn off spotlight super-slow indexing after upgrade to Lion?