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x0ssrk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 4, 2018
6
0
Hi,
I want to exclude a folder from Spotlight indexing. I know I can add it to the 'Privacy' list in System Preferences - Spotlight but I want to know if there's some other way to do this.

I searched and tried to create a file named '.metadata_never_index' in the excluded folder but it did not work on Big Sur. I don't want to add the suffix '.noindex' to folders either...
 

frou

macrumors 65816
Mar 14, 2009
1,391
2,001
I think all the Spotlight-related commands are prefixed "md", so if it's possible it will likely be mentioned in the documentation/man-pages for one of the commands:
  • mdimport
  • mdls
  • mddiagnose
  • mdfind
  • mdutil
 

gilby101

macrumors 68030
Mar 17, 2010
2,929
1,623
Tasmania
The exclusions for each volume are in /Volumes/<vol name>/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist
This is the same as with Catalina. But I wouldn't mess with it!
 
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