Spotlight is a feature of the Mac that allows you to see what is in your Downloads folder and in your iCloud Drive. If you use Spotlight to view your files, you may be wondering how to disable Spotlight on Mac. There are a few ways to disable Spotlight on Mac. The first way is to open System Preferences and select the “Spotlight” tab. There, you can set a password for Spotlight and turn off automatic indexing of files in your Downloads folder. The second way is to open System Preferences and select the “Library” tab. There, you can select which applications should have access to Spotlight search results. If you have multiple applications that want access to Spotlight search results, then you will need to choose which application should have access to each individual search result.
Spotlight is a powerful tool, offering instant search through everything on your Mac. But sometimes you’d rather keep some files private. Or maybe you’re just tired of seeing configuration files in the results. In either case, it’s easy to hide a folder and its contents from Spotlight search. Here’s how.
First, click the Apple icon in the upper-left corner of the screen and select “System Preferences” from the menu that appears.
When System Preferences opens, click “Spotlight,” which looks like a magnifying glass.
In Spotlight preferences, click the “Privacy” tab. Just below the list labeled “Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations,” click the “plus” button (“+”) to add a folder.
When the file browser window pops up, locate the folder you’d like to exclude from future Spotlight searches. You can’t pick individual files here, but you can choose a folder that contains the files you’d like to hide from the search.
Select the folder location and click “Choose.”
After that, you’ll see the folder you just added in the Spotlight exclusion list.
If you’d like to add another folder, just click the plus button again and repeat the process.
When you’re done, close System Preferences. Like a loyal friend, your Mac will conveniently “forget” to include those folder locations in any future Spotlight searches. Stay safe out there!
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