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Spotlight 'developer' and 'Web searches' can't be disabled?

R

retro83

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 3, 2008
57
0
Got these two sections showing in spotlight that I don't want (I only use it for apps). Any ideas how to disable them?

Developer (which appears to be any HTML, JAR, NFO etc) and web search.

q6ZxI.png


Can't find any option for them in the settings pane. It's obviously not a major issue, just irritating that the majority of the results it shows are things i'm never going to want.

5nVCj.png


Cheers

Edit: The files shown come from all over the filesystem, not the 'developer' directory
 
Thought this might have been there because I used to have developer tools installed - it isn't. Clean install, and still have the annoying results.
 
retro83 said:
Thought this might have been there because I used to have developer tools installed - it isn't. Clean install, and still have the annoying results.
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing and messed around a few minutes looking for an old Developer folder to delete.
 
Just a suggestion. Maybe you could add a custom entry to the plist that handles Spotlight indexing to block all html.


For developer results, you could try adding the "System" and "Library" folders to the privacy tab in preferences if you havent already.
 
gumblecosby said:
Just a suggestion. Maybe you could add a custom entry to the plist that handles Spotlight indexing to block all html.


For developer results, you could try adding the "System" and "Library" folders to the privacy tab in preferences if you havent already.
Click to expand...

I suppose it can be done by plist editing, but can't figure out what string to use as a reference for DEVELOPER results.
 
I hope this is addressed in a patch because it doesn't make sense to have it on without the ability to turn it off.
 
gumblecosby said:
Just a suggestion. Maybe you could add a custom entry to the plist that handles Spotlight indexing to block all html.


For developer results, you could try adding the "System" and "Library" folders to the privacy tab in preferences if you havent already.
Click to expand...

Privacy tab trick doesn't work. It might work if one enabled the setting, then wiped their spotlight index, and then reindexed. But after indexing (and not rebooting anyway), it doesn't work.

This is maximally annoying.
 
My issue with Spotlight Finder is that *everything* is either a "Developer" document type or "Document" document type. There is not finer resolution (images are not "images", they're "documents", same with mp3s and applications.)

I called up Apple Support, got escalated up to someone who was also confused by this and had me run some kind of info harvester to upload files to him.

I'm still waiting to hear back.

Afterthought:
My iMac with XCode installed doesn't have this problem. Both Lion and XCode were installed directly from the App Store.
The macbook which does have this problem does not have XCode, and I installed Lion off of a DVD that I put the installer file I snuck out of the downloaded version I put on my iMac.
Both versions were upgrades, as opposed to clean installs.
 
Last edited:
I tried adding a "Developer" entry to the dictionary in Spotlight's plist.
That does show up in the spotlight prefs pane, but it just gets me TWO copies of the Developer listing in Spotlight results.
-Not very useful.
I think it likely that some piece of software you've installed has a Spotlight dictionary entry in its plist.
The trick'll be to find it, and eliminate it.
 
Last edited:
Maybe I misunderstand but I don't think it's caused by external software, i did a completely clean install of 10.7. With no other software installed, I still had the developer entries listed.

In my case these are mostly .log files from my music directory (rip history from EAC) and html files from various places on the filesystem.

(This was without installing the developer tools, BTW).
 
retro83 said:
I don't think it's caused by external software...
Click to expand...
Yeah, it could easily be an oversight on something installed as part of Lion. The OS whole has a "rushed out the door" feel to it, and that's how errors like this slip through.
 
I've found a fix for removing the developer category.

  1. Go to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist
  2. Open Terminal. You will need to convert the file to XML (from binary) so you can edit it in TextEdit. The command you need is plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist
  3. Open this file in TextEdit. Just before </array> at the bottom, add the following:
    Code: 
    		<dict>
			<key>enabled</key>
			<false/>
			<key>name</key>
			<string>SOURCE</string>
		</dict>
  4. Convert the file back to binary using plutil -convert binary1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist
  5. Log out and back in again.

That worked for me. Remember to backup the com.apple.spotlight.plist file beforehand! Just in case...

Oliver
 
OliverJAsh said:
I've found a fix for removing the developer category.

  1. Go to ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist
  2. Open Terminal. You will need to convert the file to XML (from binary) so you can edit it in TextEdit. The command you need is plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist
  3. Open this file in TextEdit. Just before </array> at the bottom, add the following:
    Code: 
    		<dict>
			<key>enabled</key>
			<false/>
			<key>name</key>
			<string>SOURCE</string>
		</dict>
  4. Convert the file back to binary using plutil -convert binary1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist
  5. Log out and back in again.

That worked for me. Remember to backup the com.apple.spotlight.plist file beforehand! Just in case...

Oliver
Click to expand...

Fantastic, thank you very much for that.
 
I brought a newish Macbook Air a few months ago, and installed Yosemite on it from scratch - I didn't bring over any old files from my former macs, apart from what I can access through Dropbox.

Now my Spotlight results are cluttered up with all this Developer crap. I've never had Xcode on this mac.

I've tried the hack suggested above, but it didn't work at all. Still got this Developer stuff forming 90% of my Spotlight results.

How do I get rid of it?

Here's the last part of my Spotlight prefs:
Code: 
                <dict>
			<key>enabled</key>
			<false/>
			<key>name</key>
			<string>MENU_WEBSEARCH</string>
		</dict>
		<dict>
			<key>enabled</key>
			<false/>
			<key>name</key>
			<string>SOURCE</string>
		</dict>
	</array>
	<key>showedFTE</key>
	<true/>
	<key>showedLearnMore</key>
	<true/>
	<key>useCount</key>
	<integer>3</integer>
	<key>version</key>
	<integer>7</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
 
ditto Mavericks. I don't need three of the Spotlight categories at all: "Other", "Search Wikipedia" and "Search Web". There's a solution to removing the "Other" category, but I can't find one for the other two :(
 
There is a solution to this on Yosemite. It is to create a dummy Xcode application in the applications folder, then Spotlight will think you are a dev and allow you to turn it developer search results off.

To create the dummy Xcode app you have to go in to terminal and paste these separately otherwise it'll not work...

Code: 
cd /Applications
touch Xcode.app

Then go into system preferences and uncheck "Developer" form Spotlight searches. You may have to reopen system preferences to see the option appear...

Then open another terminal window and paste this to hide the dummy app, don't worry as spotlight will still think Xcode is installed

Code: 
chflags hidden /Applications/Xcode.app

And there you are developer search results are hidden on Yosemite :apple:
 
cobra267 said:
There is a solution to this on Yosemite. It is to create a dummy Xcode application in the applications folder, then Spotlight will think you are a dev and allow you to turn it developer search results off.

To create the dummy Xcode app you have to go in to terminal and paste these separately otherwise it'll not work...

Code: 
cd /Applications
touch Xcode.app

Then go into system preferences and uncheck "Developer" form Spotlight searches. You may have to reopen system preferences to see the option appear...

Then open another terminal window and paste this to hide the dummy app, don't worry as spotlight will still think Xcode is installed

Code: 
chflags hidden /Applications/Xcode.app

And there you are developer search results are hidden on Yosemite :apple:
Click to expand...

Didn't work for me on El Capitan 10.11 . Did you create it the dummy file with user privileges or root? What chmod did you assign?
 
For me, on El Capitan, the touch Xcode.app in /Applications worked fine. Afterwards I could uncheck the Developer box in System Preferences -> Spotlight.
I could also safely remove the dummy file again and the result remained unchanged.
 
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