How to programatically add folder to Spotlight "do not index"?

Question

Is there any way to programmatically add a folder to Spotlight's "Privacy" tab? Either through Terminal or Applescript?

Often I want to click on an item in Spotlight results in Finder, and have that item's folder no longer be indexed.

I found that if you

sudo defaults read /Volumes/foo/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist Exclusions

you can see an array with all the items excluded.

But if you try to

sudo defaults write  /Volumes/foo/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist Exclusions -array-add '/path/to/folder' 

it does NOT get added to the Privacy tab in the Spotlight Preference Panel, nor does it get de-indexed.

Answer 1

According to an answer here, a folder can be excluded from Spotlight indexing (achieving the same effect as adding it to the Privacy tab, although the folder won't actually be listed there) by either

• adding .noindex to the end of the folder's name, or
• creating an empty file .metadata_never_index inside the folder (eg with touch folder/.metadata_never_index)

You will need to restart Finder after adding .metadata_never_index, either killall Finder from Terminal or logout from the Apple menu and then log back in. This method doesn't work in Mojave and later.

Answer 2

Testing Spotlight Privacy

I use mdfind for testing if a method of preventing Spotlight works. I create a folder called spotlight_test place a file that I know Spotlight can find like dSYMs or an image and try searching for it by type:

mdfind "kMDItemContentType == com.apple.xcode.dsym"

or

mdfind "kMDItemContentType == public.jpeg"

You can find other types with mdls

Methods that work

.noindex

Naming a folder with the extension .noindex

mdutil

You can disable spotlight indexing on the whole volume, for example if the machine is a headless build machine, you can use mdutil.

mdutil -i off /

Methods that DO NOT work

VolumeConfiguration.plist

I have spent some time revisiting the /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist solution that used to work and it would seem that file will not change the indexing behavior, it only reflects the current state of the Exclusions. You can no longer start and stop the mds service without rebooting. Rebooting will display the Exclusion in Spotlight Privacy, but it does not work until you remove it and re-add it. It would seem we need a mach call to one or more services to emulate the behavior of the UI.

PLIST_BUDDY=/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy
SPOTLIGHT_PLIST=/System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist
PRIVATE_FOLDER=${HOME}/hidden_folder

UPDATE_TIME=$(date +"%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y")

if [ "$1" == "update" ]; then
    mkdir -p "${PRIVATE_FOLDER}"
    ${PLIST_BUDDY} -c "Add :Exclusions: string '${PRIVATE_FOLDER}'" "${SPOTLIGHT_PLIST}"
    ${PLIST_BUDDY} -c "Set :ConfigurationModificationDate '${UPDATE_TIME}'" "${SPOTLIGHT_PLIST}"
fi

${PLIST_BUDDY} -c "Print :ConfigurationVolumeUUID" "${SPOTLIGHT_PLIST}"
${PLIST_BUDDY} -c "Print :ConfigurationModificationDate" "${SPOTLIGHT_PLIST}"
${PLIST_BUDDY} -c "Print :Exclusions" "${SPOTLIGHT_PLIST}"

Answer 3

You have to stop and start the launchd service called com.apple.metadata.mds. So after:

sudo defaults write /Volumes/foo/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist Exclusions -array-add '/path/to/folder'

do:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.metadata.mds && sudo launchctl start com.apple.metadata.mds

Answer 4

First you have to change the permission settings to add something to the spotlight privacy tab sudo chown -R $USER:$GROUP /.Spotlight-V100/ sudo chmod -R 777 /.Spotlight-V100/

and then

sudo defaults write /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Exclusions Exclusions -array-add should work.

And don't forget to set it back afterwards.

Answer 5

You could also just go to the system prefs pane for Spotlight. There you'll find a privacy tab. Just add the folders and files you don't want to show up in the index. That's it. They've already made it easy so you don't have to use the command line.

And If it's added to the privacy tab you can see what all you have hidden from the index just in case you want to index it it later.