10.5: Remove the Spotlight menu bar icon

Nov 12, '07 03:00:00PM

Contributed by: Anonymous

To disable the Spotlight icon in the toolbar in 10.5, simply run:

sudo chmod 0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app
To re-enable it later, do this:
sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app
Note that this only disables the icon, not the indexing. To disable that, edit /etc/hostconfig in Terminal (with sudo), and change the line that reads SPOTLIGHT=-YES- to SPOTLIGHT=-NO-. (FYI, in Tiger the Spotlight.app was called Search.bundle.)

[robg adds: I struck out the above about actually disabling Spotlight, as it doesn't work in 10.5. A newer hint will soon be published that will disable Spotlight, and when it shows up, I'll link to it here.]

Update: Here's the new hint.

Comments (9)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2007103015513360