I'm looking at Activity Monitor and there is a process called mdimport that's chewing up 10-20% of CPU time at this moment. I did a quick web search and it seems it's got something to do with Spotlight indexing. Is there a way to disable it, or schedule it so it runs at off peak hours?
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How to disable mdimport?
- Thread starter akadmon
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There's no way to reschedule it as far as I know. You can disable it, but then you won't be able to use spotlight. For instructions on how to do that, go here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/comment.php?mode=view&cid=56590
There are also utilities that you can download that will do it for you in the GUI if you are afraid of the Terminal.
mdimport does not run all that frequently after the initial indexing. It's not really a CPU hog at all, and it runs at a low priority level so it doesn't steal CPU from other apps. Might not even be worth it to disable.
http://www.macosxhints.com/comment.php?mode=view&cid=56590
There are also utilities that you can download that will do it for you in the GUI if you are afraid of the Terminal.
mdimport does not run all that frequently after the initial indexing. It's not really a CPU hog at all, and it runs at a low priority level so it doesn't steal CPU from other apps. Might not even be worth it to disable.
Just having a look at my activity monitor and mdimport sits at 0%. Have just bought the mac or are you indexing an external for example.
I think it will only be that high if it is doing an initial index, to test i just destroyed my index and got spotlight to reindex my computer. It did jump up to 50% max with an average of about 30% while indexing my computer. However once it has done that, it will only be active when you are copying files or creating new one etc. So i think it is doing it's initial index. Hopefully it will drop down to sitting at 0%.
Rich
I think it will only be that high if it is doing an initial index, to test i just destroyed my index and got spotlight to reindex my computer. It did jump up to 50% max with an average of about 30% while indexing my computer. However once it has done that, it will only be active when you are copying files or creating new one etc. So i think it is doing it's initial index. Hopefully it will drop down to sitting at 0%.
Rich
Not sure why it revved up all of a sudden, but all is quiet now. I guess I'll leave it alone -- I'm not willing to give up Spotlight just yet (maybe after I try out Google Desktop).