Myth: turning off Spotlight makes your Mac faster — via Howard Oakley, The Eclectic Light Company
MythmacOS 14 Sonoma and later
Old tips say to switch off Spotlight indexing to speed up a Mac. It's a blunt fix that breaks search, and it doesn't work the way people think: switching off the categories in Spotlight settings doesn't actually stop indexing, and Howard Oakley found it can even slow some Finder operations.
What to do instead
- Leave Spotlight on.
- If one folder or drive (for example a big backup or VM disk) keeps it busy, exclude just that location in Spotlight's privacy settings instead.
- If you really must stop it, Howard Oakley recommends
sudo mdutil -a -dover the more commonsudo mdutil -a -i off; turn indexing back on withsudo mdutil -a -i on.
According to The Eclectic Light Company, Spotlight can't be fully disabled on macOS Tahoe without turning off SIP and modifying the system, which you shouldn't do.
Sources
- Can you disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe? — by Howard Oakley, The Eclectic Light Company
- Source reviewed
- 2026-11-02
- Link checked
- 2026-11-02
- Tested hands-on
- Not by Oddbyte.Me
Oddbyte.Me hasn't tried this on every macOS version, so keep the undo handy.