On OS X, does Time Machine need the index maintained by Spotlight? Will disabling Spotlight completely (via mdutil
) affect Time Machine?
MacOS – Does Time Machine need the Spotlight index
macosspotlighttime-machine
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Best Answer
Maybe it changed ever since, but these days I think the given answer
Nope
is wrong.Apple explained this by stating:
I have just tried adding my TM backup drive to the exclusion list in Catalina 10.15.4 and it was refused stating that I cannot add a Timemachine Backup to the privacy list of spotlight. - Others have tried the same in Mojave 10.14.2, in Sierra and High Sierra, with the same result.
Again others have tried doing this more ingeniously in the command line, only to find that mdworker continued to access the backups making indexes.
Oddly, though, Apple has removed its earlier article(s) about this altogether, and there is no longer any official line as to whether it’s possible.