Merge pull request #92 from zummenix/push-nwztmvwnrwqp

Write a post about disabling macOS's Spotlight

content/posts/2024/_index.md

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+title = "2024"
+sort_by = "date"
+template = "year_posts.html"
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content/posts/2024/disable_spotlight.md

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+title = "Disable Spotlight and life without it"
+description = "mds_store uses a lot of cpu indexing files for Spotlight (most likely just stuck)"
+date = 2024-12-02
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["macos", "bash", "shorts"]
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+
+I've recently noticed that the `mds_stores` process on my Mac is consuming a
+significant amount of CPU power. Again.
+
+`mds_stores` is a background process that indexes files for faster searching in
+Spotlight. Seasoned macOS users very likely know about it and know that wise
+decision would be to disable some of search areas by changing Spotlight settings.
+This is me too. I have only Applications, Calculator and System Settings items
+enabled and still `mds_stores` is the first in the list of cpu consumers in
+Activity Monitor. I'm not sure if it happened after updating macOS or earlier
+for some other reason.
+
+Something needs to be done. This is last straw :)
+
+I'm disabling Spotlight completely:
+
+```bash
+sudo mdutil -ai off
+```
+
+It spat out the following:
+```
+/:
+2024-11-22 00:21:40.119 mdutil[25437:982881] mdutil disabling Spotlight: / -> kMDConfigSearchLevelFSSearchOnly
+        Indexing disabled.
+/System/Volumes/Data:
+2024-11-22 00:21:40.144 mdutil[25437:982881] mdutil disabling Spotlight: /System/Volumes/Data -> kMDConfigSearchLevelFSSearchOnly
+Error: unable to perform operation.  (-1)
+        Error: unknown indexing state.
+/System/Volumes/Preboot:
+Error: invalid operation.
+        Error: unknown indexing state.
+```
+
+Maybe these errors are somehow related to the problem. After running the command
+second time it reported that indexing is disabled without any errors.
+
+It's sad to loose Spotlight functionality. Brief research revealed existence of
+similar apps such as [Alfred](https://www.alfredapp.com) or
+[Raycast](https://www.raycast.com). I haven't tried them because I probably
+can't use most of their features. Eventually I figured that I can write
+simple alternatives for my needs myself. That I did.
+
+The main feature of Spotlight that I miss the most is fast opening any app by
+typing in Spotlight search field. The solution would be to search the `*.app`
+in special directories. Filter/search could be done using 
+[`fzf`](https://junegunn.github.io/fzf/) (or similar tools). And opening an
+app will be done using native Apple script. Here is the first working script
+in bash:
+
+```bash
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+function list_apps {
+    find "$1" -type d -maxdepth 1 -name '*.app' | sed 's#.*/##' | sed 's/.app$//'
+}
+
+paste -d'\n' <(list_apps /Applications) <(list_apps /System/Applications) <(list_apps /System/Applications/Utilities) | \
+    xargs -I{} echo "{}" | \
+    sort -if | \
+    fzf --header "Select app to open" | \
+    xargs -I{} osascript -e "tell application \"{}\" to activate"
+```
+
+Here is how it looks:
+
+<div>
+<script src="https://asciinema.org/a/693053.js" id="asciicast-693053" async="true"></script>
+</div>
+
+I'll probably update this script in the future if I find any bugs or find myself
+missing some features. You can always check my dotfiles for that
+[here](https://github.com/zummenix/dotfiles/tree/master/scripts).
+
+For now I'm happy with this simple solution, knowing that `mds_stores` won't
+use any cpu to no purpose.