Does Disabling Spotlight Search Improve Performance?

[Heat_Fan89]

I've read and don't know if it's true that if you disable Spotlight from searching your Mac and if you add your Hard Drive in the "Privacy Pane" that it will disable "indexing". Is that true? Is it harmful to the OS in the way it operates?

I find that after each update my Mac runs hotter and Spotlight and Windowserver "processes" take up some CPU resources which cause my 2012 mini to run hotter. I just wanted some thoughts on what others think?

 

[fisherking]

once spotlight does it's first run, the rest is incremental. but perhaps yours is stuck indexing? you could put your HD in privacy, then shortly after, remove it... and that should jump-start indexing (but google this, am not entirely sure about it). i would think you'd want a searchable index, and again, it should not be eating up resources once the drive is in fact indexed...

 

[eRondeau]

I'm no coding expert, but it makes sense that your Mac is running hotter and the Spotlight -related processes spool-up when you do a MacOS upgrade. Each upgrade changes apx 2GB of "stuff" that Spotlight needs to re-index. As it's one of the core services of MacOS you should probably let Spotlight do its thing unhindered. I'm sure lots of other functions depend on Spotlight being up-to-date.

 

[chrfr]

I've read and don't know if it's true that if you disable Spotlight from searching your Mac and if you add your Hard Drive in the "Privacy Pane" that it will disable "indexing". Is that true? Is it harmful to the OS in the way it operates?

I find that after each update my Mac runs hotter and Spotlight and Windowserver "processes" take up some CPU resources which cause my 2012 mini to run hotter. I just wanted some thoughts on what others think?

I use Spotlight all the time; it's integral to the functionality of many apps so for me turning it off would have a very significantly negative effect in the usability of the computer. The Spotlight processes should stabilize after some time and should not be taking up many resources in general.
Windowserver is how apps display on your screen, so there's no disabling that.

 

[fisherking]

I'm no coding expert, but it makes sense that your Mac is running hotter and the Spotlight -related processes spool-up when you do a MacOS upgrade. Each upgrade changes apx 2GB of "stuff" that Spotlight needs to re-index. As it's one of the core services of MacOS you should probably let Spotlight do its thing unhindered. I'm sure lots of other functions depend on Spotlight being up-to-date.

fwiw, spotlight doesn't index system files, etc. so it does not have much to do after an OS update (just a little to do). i use 'find any file' if i need to do 'deeper' searches; spotlight is good only for what it's good for 🤔

 

[Honza1]

Disabling Spotlight will break lots of maxOS functions. Mail is using Spotlight for smart folders and some functionality, TimeMachine needs working Spotlight. I have once or twice Spotlight break on me for some reason and fixing it was real pain - and critically necessary for my Mac to be really usable. Also, after running once through your files, which may take time and cpu, Spotlight takes little resources.
Tl;DR: Do not break Spotlight, you will regret it.

 

[xgman]

Just disable it on all external drives and TM etc..