Reinstall Spotlight

[Muggsy]

Hi

I just went into the Mac world that I have been using for work for a while by buying a MBP (10.8.2).
Wanting to personalising it, I discovered how difficult it was.

One of the changes I did was to get rid of the Spotlight Icon on the top right corner. Nevertheless, after using Terminal to do so, it seems that not only the icon but also the programme itself has disappeared!
It is indeed not in the Coreservices, and since then I have had problems to install some programmes (impossible to install Flash and VLC).

I only wanted to get rid of the icon and did so with the help of one of many forums showing how to do so (advice which worked apparently fine for other users).

Now my question is: How can I reinstall it?

Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks a lot

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Can you post what method you used to remove Spotlight? A link or command perhaps?

Since Spotlight is part of the system, a normal reinstallation might work just fine, no personal data or settings or already installed applications will be removed, only parts of the system, that have been damaged (Spotlight in this case) will be repaired that way.

Next time backup before doing things like that. And backup anyway.

To learn more about Mac OS X: Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[Muggsy]

Oh thanks for your quick reply.

I have been looking at so many forums that I can't tell now, I tried to find the page before and didnt manage to do so. Ill try to find it again.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Oh thanks for your quick reply.

I have been looking at so many forums that I can't tell now, I tried to find the page before and didnt manage to do so. Ill try to find it again.

It would probably be faster to just reinstall OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

 

[Muggsy]

Found it!

And there was the command to re-enable it.
What is surprising is that I still can't find anything related to Spotlight in the Coreservices, even though I read somewhere that there should be a dedicated file or folder.

In case somebody wants to disable Spotlight totally:

sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle.bak
killall SystemUIServer

Or re-enable it:

sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle.bak /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle
killall SystemUIServer

Interesting enough, Flash does work in fact even if the installation failed...
Ok now let's hope not to spend again hours trying to figure out how to remove this damn Spotlight icon without using any extra software.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Glad you found it, but why do you want to not use Spotlight or have the Spotlight icon visible? I hardly notice the icon, only when I use Spotlight, though in most cases I use Alfred.

 

[Muggsy]

Hi
I want to use the direct shortcut for searching the Mac.
As for the icon I simply don't need it, and I want my desktop to be uncluttered.
Thanks for the support!