How To Restrict Spotlight to Search in Private Folders On Mac

You can use Spotlight on Mac to find something fast and quickly but if you want to restrict Spotlight from searching to some specific location or folders because of any personal reason or to make your Mac secure while others are using it then follow the method written below to do so.

This method will limit the search activity of Spotlight but it does not mean that Spotlight stop working.

How to Restrict Spotlight Search On Mac

Step 1

Click on Apple logo and then select System Preferences

Step 2

Click on Spotlight


Step 3

Select Privacy tab and click on ‘+’ button to add the item to which you want to exclude from Spotlight search

To include the item back to Spotlight search, select that item and click ‘-‘ button

Step 4

Close the windows to make the change affective

2 comments… add one
Tom February 28, 2010, 6:06 am

its nice feature to restrict spotlight, but is there anyway to completely disable spotlight?

Bruce March 12, 2010, 2:12 pm

Its working and spotlight not indexing specific folder.

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