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Spotless is a simple utility designed to enable and disable Spotlight content indexing of volumes with the click of a button.Spotlight content indexing can cause major slow-downs on volumes that are used for backup purposes, video rendering, Photoshop scratch disks, and a wide variety of tasks that involve the transfer of large amounts of data. Spotless can effectively and indefinitely disable the indexing of volumes that you specify. Even if the volume is a removable device, the indexing status is remembered when you remount it - even on a different computer!Simply adding volumes to Spotlight's privacy list does not achieve the same results as using Spotless. You may cause the Metadata Server to crash, and the volumes may be indexed the next time you mount them. Also, while adding volumes to the privacy list disables content indexing, it also prevents you from finding the files by name.Spotless allows you to delete existing Spotlight indexes. This will free up the space used by the index files on volumes that are no longer being indexed. You may also delete indexes on volumes that are being indexed. This will cause Spotlight to reindex the volume - especially useful if your index becomes damaged.If you are having difficulties with Spotlight indexing, it could be because the ".Spotlight-V100" directory on the volume has become damaged in some way. Spotless provides a quick way to delete this directory and set the initial indexing status of the volume. In order to set the indexing status, the ".Spotlight-V100" directory will be recreated.Spotless will automatically find and delete the "mds-crash-state" file from selected volumes. The file may be created if the Metadata Server crashed or was unexpectedly closed during the indexing process. The presence of this file can prevent Spotlight from indexing the volume in the future.Spotless allows you to see exact size the index directory on each volume.Spotless also includes an on/off switch for Spotlight.
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />is working perfectly for me.
Excellent app!
PQXYZ33
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I moved from Panther to Tiger because Spotlight sounded sssooooo promising, and it seemed to work just great at the local Apple retail store. In practice, however, I found that it deosn't find all the files that it should, it continues to "find" files on drives that have been put in the privacy list, and it chokes on internal or external drives or volumes that are clones of the main boot drive.
Even worse, once I unmount those external clones, Spotlight seems to continue to "hunt" for them, using up CPU resources (as much as ~90% every few seconds) and doing thousands of disk writes (which coincide with the use of CPU resources every few seconds)--even when nothing else at all is going on.
Disabling Spotlight with Spotless completely eliminates the problems caused by Spotlight--and now, being able to remove the Spotlight icon from the menubar is icing on the cake!
Thank you Spotless!
-Don-
P.S. The developer has been very responsive (in the past) to some questions and feature requests that I had.
Goodbye Spotlight...
VersionTrackerUserOpinion
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />welcome back, EasyFind. If Spotless would provide for the generic disabling of external drives I would keep Spotlight active on my internal disk. Since I often resize and rename my externals I am forced to use one of the best freeware application ever written, EasyFind. Thank you FixaMac, thank you Devon, Apple, I am leaving a message.
A Must Have
mrmobius
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br /> Version 1.1 of Spotless finally allowed me to upgrade to Tiger. I've been running 10.3.9 for almost a year after Tigers' release. Widgets, need I say more? Endless clutter, no scalable windows, and continuous memory use, ick. Sherlock is enough. Then this automatic look everywhere at one, need to search my search, spotlight? Apple misnamed it's search technology, it should be called Floodlight. As a professional audio engineer and freelance Mac tech the notion of needing to manually stop disable the indexing of every external drive I mount on my mac was absurd. I put a damaged mac into target mode, Carbon Copy Clone, or run Disk Warrior, oh but wait, why is it so slow? I forgot, Flood... I mean Spotlight is indexing; Open system preferences, drag to window, start repair/copy.
I think the most important features of Spotless 1.1, is the ability to disable the automatic part of Spotlight.
Set your internal drive in the spotless drive list to, "Auto = No" and the global automatic setting to "On + Disable" and your good to go. With this setting Spotlight is lightning fast on your internal and still searches, not excluding by name, your external volumes. Powerful to say the least and you can always designate other drives to ignore the automatic setting.
This is highly recommended for audio/video professionals as well as techs. So drop down the ten bucks and enjoy Spotlight the way it should have been from the start.
excellent!
tracy valleau--2008
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />While I despise Spotlight, I find I have to use it becasue FoxTrot requires it. That said, Spotless is great. Unlike one previous poster, I find the developer cordial and quick to respond. I have no trouble with spotless "remembering" the settings on my removable drives.
This software works as advertised, and the new ability to simply ignore removable volumes (for people like me who use them for backups) is great.
Highly recommended product.
Not working
Froggies--2008
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Spotless doesn't work for any of my external drives. I have to set it up from scratch every time I connect to an external drive. It doesn't remember the settings. Developer has been completly unresponsive to several requests for assistance.
Nice App. Now If I could Turn Dashboard Off...
handsolo
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Great time-saving application to turn off the anoying Indexing of Spotlight. As to the people that ask why turn it off: Because I don't need every freaking thing on my drive mapped, that's why. It's about privacy and security. The 'Find' function worked great for me, making Spotlight even more pointless. I don't need or want applications running on my computer that I can't turn off (ie. Spotlight Indexing and Dashboard). Macs were supposed to be about user interface and control, and now were losing it. Thanks to applications like this, maybe we can take some control back.
