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When I first started using Snow Leopard, I used spotlight to launch programs. I would type cmd-space and the first few letters of the program (chr to launch Google Chrome, for example).
This worked great for about a week -- the first result was always the application, and results turned up instantaneously.
Since then Spotlight has gotten progressively slower, to the point that now, if I type "illus" to launch Adobe Illustrator, it takes more than 10 seconds (a loonnng time) to find the Illustrator application. This even though I use it all the time and it's in the recent programs list.
Does anyone know why Spotlight is so slow to find a file near the top of the disk hierarchy that's in frequent use?
I have tried adding and removing various disks etc. from the privacy pane of the Spotlight system settings. Even when I put every disk and folder in the "prevent" list except applications, Spotlight is agonizingly slow.
I also tried deleting the spotlight preferences in the preferences folder, and disabled all the "mdimporter" files that were in /Library/Spotlight:
- AppleWorks
- GBSpotlightImporter
- iWork
- LogicPro
- Microsoft Office
Nothing helped.
After doing this for a few weeks, it is not clear that it helps very much. I did it yesterday, and today Spotlight is slow again. – Andrew Swift – 2010-12-21T10:28:37.827