Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Article and blog reception

  • Commenters widely praise the linked post for being concise, clear about limitations, and providing actionable steps.
  • The blog is seen as a rare deep-technical resource on obscure macOS internals, especially around Spotlight and system services.

System Integrity, SSV, and FileVault

  • Frustration that Apple prevents disabling many launchd jobs in /System, even for admins.
  • Confusion and clarification between SIP and Signed System Volume (SSV):
    • FileVault works with SIP disabled.
    • To modify the system volume (e.g., to remove certain system services), SSV must be disabled, which does require disabling FileVault.
  • Some see this as a forced trade-off: keep encryption and accept Apple’s control, or gain control and lose encryption. Others question whether disabling SSV meaningfully increases recovery-mode attack risk; the security implications remain somewhat unclear in the thread.

User freedom vs safety for non‑technical users

  • One side argues: it’s my computer, I should be able to disable any service, accept my own risk, and use tools like launchctl freely.
  • The opposing view: allowing easy shutdown of core services invites malware and social engineering (e.g., disabling security daemons and telemetry).
  • There’s a broader lament that macOS is drifting toward an “appliance” model and away from power users, prompting some to move to Linux or (to a lesser extent) Windows, which still allows disabling arbitrary services.

Spotlight: utility vs cost

  • Defenders rely on Spotlight for:
    • System-wide file and content search (including Mail, PDFs, images with OCR, contacts, calendar, etc.).
  • Critics report:
    • Heavy CPU use and constant indexing, with metadata scattered across the disk.
    • Poor relevance, noisy results (e.g., random headers or node_modules), and especially bad app-launching behavior in Tahoe.
  • Alternatives suggested: CLI tools (find, grep, ag/ripgrep, locate), disciplined directory structure, Alfred/Raycast/Quicksilver (though most sit atop Spotlight’s index), or custom SQLite catalogs.
  • Some note you can exclude directories from Spotlight in System Settings; others still choose to disable Spotlight entirely. Views on Tahoe’s Spotlight performance are sharply split.

Siri, Shortcuts, and background analyzers

  • Several daemons (e.g., siriactionsd, siriknowledged, mediaanalysisd, photoanalysisd, Photos background analysis) are implicated in Siri, Suggestions, Shortcuts, and image/media processing.
  • People struggle to fully disable automatic OCR and image analysis; there’s debate whether OCR is really “on demand” vs powered by always-running background services.
  • Some report mediaanalysisd and newer AI-related daemons (knowledgeconstructiond) pegging CPUs for long periods, with no straightforward way to turn them off without system-level compromises.

MDM and configuration‑profile controls

  • Enterprise and privacy-conscious users mention MDM/mobileconfig options:
    • Keys such as allowAssistant can fully disable Siri/Apple Intelligence.
    • Separate profiles can disable server-side logging of Siri requests.
  • These profiles can be installed without full supervision, making them a viable route for advanced users even outside corporate environments.

Privacy and Google‑powered Siri

  • Concern that Siri being powered by Google Gemini undermines the expectation that Macs are “not Google devices.”
  • Others point to claims that Gemini will run on Apple’s infrastructure so that user data supposedly never reaches Google directly, but this is treated as provisional and subject to future change.
  • There’s anxiety about the economic incentive for deeper data sharing once Google’s models are embedded in the ecosystem.

Performance workarounds and scheduling

  • Some resort to hacks:
    • Cron jobs that repeatedly SIGSTOP mediaanalysisd.
    • Third‑party tools (e.g., CPU throttlers) to cap Spotlight or browser CPU usage.
  • Broader argument that users should have first‑class control over process priorities and scheduling, not just permissions; macOS is criticized for feeling busy and laggy compared to Linux machines that idle near 0% CPU.

Overall sentiment about macOS direction

  • Many feel macOS has increasingly adopted iOS-like constraints: non-removable system apps, protected daemons, and opaque background processing.
  • Some see Tahoe’s search and AI layers as emblematic of this trend, with “smart” features consuming resources and being hard to disable.
  • A recurring theme is alienation of long-time Mac power users, some of whom are actively migrating personal machines to Linux while keeping Macs only where required.