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How does Spotlight indexing work in OS X?
During active indexing, Spotlight disables searching. If you try clicking the magnifying glass to attempt a search, you will instead see an indexing status message with a progress bar. Spotlight is a key feature in OS X. Understand how it works and how to maintain it, and Spotlight will return the love.
What does the pulsating dot on the center of the Spotlight icon mean?
The pulsating dot in the center of Spotlight’s menu bar icon indicates active indexing. During active indexing, Spotlight disables searching. If you try clicking the magnifying glass to attempt a search, you will instead see an indexing status message with a progress bar.
How to enable or disable spotlight on Mac?
The Spotlight feature in MacOS Sierra allows you to search the items on your PC as well as the web. You can enable or disable Spotlight using these steps. From the Finder, select the Apple Menu then choose “ System Preferences… “. Select “ Spotlight “, located in the top row. Check the items you wish to allow Spotlight to index.
Is there a way to turn off Spotlight indexing?
One recommendation was to create a special hidden file “.metadata_never_index_unless_rootfs” at the root of the file system (“/” folder), however it doesn’t turn off Spotlight mdworkers.
Why does spotlight keep re-indexing the volume?
Spotlight now proceeds to re-index the contents of the volume; this occurs in the background. Depending on how much data is on the drive, this can take a considerable amount of time – hours, in fact. However, you can continue to work with only a slight performance hit due to disk activity.
How can I rebuild the spotlight Index on my Mac?
If searching your Mac doesn’t return expected results, rebuilding the Spotlight index might help. Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Spotlight. Click the Privacy tab. Drag the folder or disk that you want to index again to the list of locations that Spotlight is prevented from searching.