Terminal Tips: Disable Spotlight in menu bar

Terminal Tips: Disable Spotlight in menu bar

Filed under: Terminal Tips

Are you tired of accidentally opening spotlight by pressing command + space? With this simple Terminal "hack," you can rid your precious menu bar of Spotlight for once and all. Just open Terminal.app (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and type the following command:

sudo chmod 0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

You will be required to authenticate as an administrator, then the command will run. While you are still in the Terminal, type "killall Spotlight" to turn off the spotlight service right then. Spotlight will suddenly dissappear from your menu bar. To get Spotlight back, just type the following command back into Terminal:

sudo chmod 775 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

After a few seconds, Spotlight will reappear in your menu bar. Note that this does not remove Spotlight from Finder windows, only from the menu bar.


Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.

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