Why does spotlight keeps indexing

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. More information about our Cookie Policy. Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Strictly Necessary Cookies Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. Enable or Disable Cookies. What is spotlight indexing and should I turn it off?

Ask Question. Asked 4 years, 10 months ago. Active 1 year, 3 months ago. Viewed 27k times. Improve this question. Vallerand Vallerand 73 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Leave it on. You use an OS that heavily depends on this, you need to allow it to index. Improve this answer. Tetsujin Tetsujin Could you provide an authoritative reference to the " a bit of file indexing is going to perhaps shorten its life by 20 minutes or so, overall " comment?

It was obviously a joke. You could try work it out from h I know it was a joke, I saw the smilie face Tolsadus Tolsadus 1 1 silver badge 9 9 bronze badges.

Mobisoft Infotech Mobisoft Infotech 21 2 2 bronze badges. Piotr Badura Piotr Badura 3 3 bronze badges. This is not an answer to the question, OP wants to know what it is that spotlight is doing during indexing, and what would happen if it was switched of — dennismuijs.

Filesystem errors can easily lead to access and data handling problems that could, among other issues, have Spotlight continually try to index files. Doing this will run the verification on all selected drives, and if any issues are found, then attempt to repair them using the Repair Disk button. If the problem is found on your boot drive, then you will need to reboot to the Recovery HD partition hold Command-R when you hear the boot chimes at startup , to fix the issue at hand.

Thanks Topher, very useful, but can you tell it to do that on specific volumes? The -a option is precisely the one telling mdutil to work on all the volumes. If you omit it, you need to specify the volumes you want to affect:. Apple should also allow to search non-indexed volumes, as EasyFind does.