MacOS – How to Remove Spotlight Icon from Menu Bar

macmacososx-snow-leopard

How do I remove the Spotlight icon from the Mac OS X menubar?

Spotlight icon

Note, I don't want to disable Spotlight (I use it). I just want to remove the icon.

Best Answer

OK just tested this in SL and it worked, icon was removed but spotlight was still working in Finder:

$ cd /System/Library/CoreServices/
$ sudo mv Search.bundle/ Search2.bundle/

Now restart SystemUIServer, the icon is gone, Spotlight still works. To get Spotlight icon back:

$ sudo mv Search2.bundle/ Search.bundle/

And restart SystemUIServer again...

Related Solutions

MacOS Spotlight – Stuff Disappearing from Spotlight Search

First, make sure Applications (and the others that you want) is selected in System Preferences > Spotlight.

If that does not work, it is possible somehow indexing got disabled. In terminal, run the following command:

sudo mdutil -E /

Still, if that fails try deleting the Spotlight index and start indexing it again:

sudo rm -r /.Spotlight-V<TAB>
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
sudo mdutil -E /

On my machine, the Spotlight index was .Spotlight-V100, but I have seen it as other, that is why used tab completion

Macos – How to tell Spotlight not to index a particular folder

You can add that folder to the Spotlight privacy list.

Open System Preferences and click Spotlight.

Click Privacy.

Drag folders or disks to add them to the Privacy list, or click the Add (+) button to browse for an item.

To remove an item, select it and click Delete (-).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS Spotlight – Stuff Disappearing from Spotlight Search

Macos – How to tell Spotlight not to index a particular folder

Related Question