Spotless

Spotless is a handy tool that lets you turn Spotlight's auto indexing on or off with just one click. Pretty cool, right?

Why Use Spotless?

So, here’s the deal: Spotlight indexing can really slow things down, especially on volumes used for backups, video rendering, or anything that involves moving a lot of data around. That’s where Spotless comes to the rescue!

Easily Control Indexing

This nifty software can disable indexing for any volume you choose. And guess what? Even if it’s a removable device, it remembers your settings when you plug it back in—no matter what computer you’re using!

A Better Solution Than Privacy Lists

You might think adding volumes to Spotlight's privacy list would do the trick. But honestly, it doesn't work as well as Spotless. If you go this route, you risk crashing the Metadata Server and could end up with those volumes being indexed again next time.

Cleaning Up Existing Indexes

Spotless also lets you delete old Spotlight indexes. This is great because it frees up space from index files on volumes that aren’t being indexed anymore. Plus, if something goes wrong and your index gets damaged, deleting the index will force Spotlight to reindex the volume.

Taking Care of Crash Files

This tool will even find and zap that pesky “mds-crash-state” file from your selected volumes. This file usually pops up if there’s a crash during indexing and can stop Spotlight from working properly later.

Check Your Index Size

Another cool feature of Spotless? It shows you exactly how big the index directory is on each volume. Super helpful!

The On/Off Switch for Spotlight

Spotless has an easy on/off switch for Spotlight itself! Just keep in mind that if you turn it off completely, searching won’t be available until you switch it back on. So no “find” features in Finder while it's off.

If You Need to Find Files...

If you're thinking about turning off Spotlight altogether but still want to search for files easily, check out EasyFind by Devon Technologies instead!

If you're ready to give Spotless a try, it could really help speed things up!