Tweak your Spotlight Settings to Double OSX Battery Life

My Spotlight indexer process was consistently using 75-150% CPU. Since I *never* use Spotlight for document content searches, and *only* use it for app launching (really, Alfred (http://alfredapp.com) on top of Spotlight), I added ALL hard drive directories except for my Applications directory to Spotlight’s Privacy tab (System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy).

The Spotlight indexer process is now silent, and my battery life has doubled.

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4 Responses to “Tweak your Spotlight Settings to Double OSX Battery Life”

  1. Luke Says:

    Interesting approach.

    It sounds like spotlight was having problems indexing something on your drive. I see it using 0-1% unless: 1) I just added a bunch of files to my drive that will need to be indexed or 2) I’m doing a search.

  2. brian Says:

    Indeed. I was chalking it up to an attempt to index a development log file or some particularly problematic email attachment.

    Ah, well. Problem sidestepped.

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  4. Salman Ansari Says:

    Alternatively, couldn’t you just pick *only* the Applications in the “Search Results” section, which lets you tell Spotlight what to index?


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