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I tried to remove spotlight form the menu bar with the following trick:

sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search
killall SystemUIServer

Unfortunately if I repair disk permissions and reboot at some point (or just simply reboot some people tell me), the annoying spotlight thing is back in the menu bar.

I don't want to disable spotlight, just to take off the damn magnifying glass from the menu bar persistently. Is there a way the works better than the one I presented above?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
14

This works at least up to 10.9.2.

To disable:

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

To re-enable:

sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle.bak /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle
killall SystemUIServer
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  • will this just kill the icon or actually disable spotlight? I like spotlight indexing my mail...
    – user1256923
    Aug 1, 2012 at 10:49
  • Just the icon...
    – bot47
    Aug 1, 2012 at 10:52
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There are a few apps that can remove the icon for you, I used Bartender to check it works in Mountain Lion:

enter image description here

It will even get rid of Notification Center if you so desire ;)

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  • Won't work correctly if iStatMenu is active.
    – bot47
    Aug 1, 2012 at 10:42
  • Maybe not, it's in Beta at present, and the OP doesn't say they have iStatMenu running, I don't.
    – stuffe
    Aug 1, 2012 at 10:43
  • 1
    I'm running iStatMenus and Bartender right now and it's working okay for me. Thanks OP, didn't even notice Bartender was able to hide Spotlight/Notification Centre!
    – Dan Barrett
    Aug 1, 2012 at 10:50
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In macOS Big Sur (and probably later) there's an option to enable and disable the the icon. Go to System settings -> Dock and menu row -> Spotlight and uncheck Show in menu row. Spotlight is still available thru the keyboard command.

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