Category: Geeks r Us
I've read some user guides for how to disable spotlight on Mac 10.4, I have no trouble opening the file mentioned, which is /etc/hostconfig.
What I have trouble is with voice over not reading the text using either the Nano or vim text editors.
When I use text edit to open the file, the entry that I'm looking for:
spotlight - = yes-
isn't displayed, that way I can change it to no.
I want to disable spotlight because I don't want it indexing my external drives with more then 50 gigs on them.
Any help with a text editor or a way for me to see all the entries would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
There is a free text editor called Bean.
http://osx.iusethis.com/app/bean
Give it a try.
I've tried out bean, as you had suggested, Willy, but no luck, there're actually 2 files.
hostsconfig and
hostsconfig~
When I open up hostsconfig, nothing comes up, but when I open up hostsconfig~, what's there is shown, just like in textedit, the entry that I want to edit isn't there.
Maybe Apple changed the disabling of Spotlight in Leopard?
I've found a tutorial online, but there're parts that don't work, I know the files that I want to disable exist, but when I try to follow the steps, I get a message similar to:
couldn't start com.apple.Spotlight.plist, no such file or directory.
What am I doing wrong?
The url for the spotlight tutorial is: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071102215912892
Its the last post.
The fix is to use Windows, where everything has a GUI, so all you do is change checkboxes, radio buttons, edit fields, and such. :D
Even newbies can make significant changes to windows without ever once having to look at config files, registry entries, or those sophisticated stuff.
*cough*
Kai
I've gotta give you credit, last poster, forthe sarcastic reply, good one, btw.
Nothing I've tried has worked, same message, even if I use the entire file path.
It says:
unable to start /System/Library/LaunchDaeomons/com.apple.Spotlight.plist, no file or directory by that name exists:
process completed.
I'll figure the answer out sooner or later, since there's something I'm probably missing.
Ok, there're 2 utils I used, one is freeware, its similar to TweakUI in Windows, the name of the util is TinkerTool.
I know weird name, but it disables dashboard, if wanted, disables animations, other neat stuff, also speeds the loading of Safari pages.
The util I used to disable Spotlight is called Spotless, its at version 2.0, and also available for Tiger.
Spotless is shareware, and has a 15 second startup delay if you don't purchase it, its $16 per single user license.
Both utils are very voiceover friendly in Leopard, all buttons and checkboxes are labeled correctly.
Hope this helps someone else out, in the future, if they also want to disable Spotlight.
wow! I'll remember this for sure! Thanks for posting that.
I've also found another good util, only 2 things about it are:
1. You must not remove US English and English from the selection screen.
2. I've not played around with any of the removal of different keyboard layouts, that's actually dangerous..
Same for the mac archetecture such as PowerPC or G3-G5.
The util name that does all of this is: Monolingwo.
Its freeware, and it does take about 3 hours to run dependingon how fast your mac is.
And how much stuff you want to remove from it.
excellent! thanks.