Spotlight is slow

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I use spotlight all the time, but I think it tries too hard. I see what I want but it dissapears as the list is still being generated. Its so frustrating to say, "Oh there it is" and by the time my mouse moves to it, its gone! Arghhh!!!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    I like Spotlight, especially as a first implementation. There are improvements to be made, though... Have you considered re-indexing your drive?
  • Reply 2 of 18
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MajorMatt View Post


    I use spotlight all the time, but I think it tries too hard. I see what I want but it dissapears as the list is still being generated. Its so frustrating to say, "Oh there it is" and by the time my mouse moves to it, its gone! Arghhh!!!



    this is irritating, and i hope something will be done about it in leopard
  • Reply 3 of 18
    Yes, the find-as-you-type feature slows it down; each time you change your query with one character, a new search starts. They should put a delay on it, like "if user doesnt type for 1 second, start query".
  • Reply 4 of 18
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Download Onyx, in Maintanence choose reset Spotlight Index, you will see a profound difference when this it finished. It should take about 5 or 10 minutes.
  • Reply 5 of 18
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    It now seems to be finishing and beginning to index all the time.......slowing this machine to a crawl. Help me Ireland!
  • Reply 6 of 18
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dacloo View Post


    Yes, the find-as-you-type feature slows it down; each time you change your query with one character, a new search starts. They should put a delay on it, like "if user doesnt type for 1 second, start query".



    that's a good idea!
  • Reply 7 of 18
    How do i re-index? is there a apple way to do it and not use the third party onyx?
  • Reply 8 of 18
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Blascock View Post


    How do i re-index? is there a apple way to do it and not use the third party onyx?



    Why do people ask qusetions that there's solutions to? If Onyx does it, then use it.
  • Reply 9 of 18
    kcmackcmac Posts: 1,051member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ireland View Post


    Why do people ask qusetions that there's solutions to? If Onyx does it, then use it.



    Plus it is FREE, solid and a great app.
  • Reply 10 of 18
    Maybe I'm wrong but I thought the easiest way to do this was to go to the privacy options of the Spotlight preference page, Add the hard disk to the privacy selections and then remove it. This will get rid of the index and then re-create it.
  • Reply 11 of 18
    rebuilt my index today. not sure if it's much faster, but then i wasn't having any major problems in the first place! i've been using tiger since 10.4.0 so it's probably a good idea to have done it now
  • Reply 12 of 18
    This may or not be relevant but if you're using Office 2004 and in particular Entourage, then add the 'microsoft user data' folder in documents to the privacy list. The indexing of Entourage data is done via sync services and having Spotlight index this folder will slow down Entourage greatly.
  • Reply 13 of 18
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by physguy View Post


    Maybe I'm wrong but I thought the easiest way to do this was to go to the privacy options of the Spotlight preference page, Add the hard disk to the privacy selections and then remove it. This will get rid of the index and then re-create it.



    Just to feed back, doing this to my system had a very significant effect on the speed of Spotlight reporting. It took a couple of hours to re-index but well worth it.
  • Reply 14 of 18
    I feel the pain too. I used spotlight as a launcher, mostly. My main beef with it was that it continues searching, long after it has found what I needed, and clicking the X removes all the search results. This makes it a bit unwieldy.



    I use Quicksilver now. I highly recommend it.
  • Reply 15 of 18
    sc_marktsc_markt Posts: 1,402member
    I've been using spotlight more and more as time goes on. Its not too slow on my machine (a 450MHz single processor sawtooth).



    - Mark
  • Reply 16 of 18
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Blascock View Post


    How do i re-index? is there a apple way to do it and not use the third party onyx?



    In Terminal,



    sudo mdutil -E /



    will remove the metadata store (index) for the root ("/") - namely the whole file system. It will be rebuilt automatically.



    You will have to enter an Admin password for the sudo command (mdutil must be root to run).
  • Reply 17 of 18
    dmberdmber Posts: 204member
    quicksilver
  • Reply 18 of 18
    slewisslewis Posts: 2,081member
    [quote=dmber;1045993] quicksilver [/quote]

    New and Improved!



    Sebastian
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