OSX .4 - Ridding of Dashboard/ Spotlight

D DAS · Post by **D DAS** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:24 am

I know this has been discussed but recently and I could not find it on a search.

I finally upgraded to OSX.4 I recall reading that dashboard and spotlight suck up needed CPU. What is the best way to stop this? should I just delete them from applications?

input please

thanks

d~

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:37 am

http://d-t-f.sourceforge.net/

^^ Use this utility. It's not universal, but it still works on intel macs. Goodbye, stupid spotlight!

rbmonosylabik · Post by **rbmonosylabik** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:38 am

Don't disable spotlight.

To disable dashboard:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? ... Bdashboard

to be honest, there's no tweaks in osx that save much cpu. I disabled dashboard because I really have no need for it.

Pitch Black · Post by **Pitch Black** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 8:48 am

Another vote for leaving Spotlight intact. I killed it with some 3rd party app on my old powerbook (sorry forget which) and it killed the ability to search in my email an' all. Couldn't get Spotlight to turn back on either...

On a MBP now and I'm leaving it as it is.

My2c.

P.S. I have Dashboard left on too - I use these handy music calculator widgets all the time: http://www.henrybourne.co.uk/widgetSite/

cheers!

dango · Post by **dango** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:00 am

cool little widgets pitchblack, thanks for posting em.

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 9:01 am

There is absolutely no harm in disabling spotlight, if you do it the right way. If you use the DTF app at the above link that I posted, you can easily re-enable spotlight should you decide you need it again. No problems, no worries. DTF also gives you the option to nuke the spotlight database, which will have to be rebuilt (of course) if you decide to re-enable it.

I actually do use dashboard, and it generally only wastes memory when running. The CPU usage required by it when not in use is basically zero. However, I've been running spotlight free ever since 10.4 was released... but I'm kind of an old unix junkie, so it's easier for me to just use "find" instead.

Spotlight is quite visible in terms of CPU power and disk space. Just look for the "mds" process in activity monitor... you'll see it go nuts whenever you attach an external drive, or occaisionally at random intervals.

noiselevel · Post by **noiselevel** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:24 pm

http://looprock.com/?q=code/upbeat

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:50 pm

I don't know why people freak out about Dashboard, there's some cool widgets out there for musicians. I found a handy system monitoring one (temp, CPU, memory usage, etc), one that shows you different chords in a set scale, another than shows you notes in a scale on a mini keyboard. They take like what, 40MB of memory on my MBP.

Besides, dashboard doesn't take any memory if you don't launch it first, just jst drag the icon off your dock and ignore it, no?

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:51 pm

Tarekith wrote: Besides, dashboard doesn't take any memory if you don't launch it first, just jst drag the icon off your dock and ignore it, no?

No, it's launched as a background process, regardless of whether or not it's in the dock. However, it doesn't actually allocate any memory for widgets until the first time you launch it.

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 2:07 pm

rbmonosylabik wrote:Don't disable spotlight.

To disable dashboard:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php? ... Bdashboard

to be honest, there's no tweaks in osx that save much cpu. I disabled dashboard because I really have no need for it.

they do not take anything from your precious CPU power to worry about [it's 100% minor] unless you use them actively.
and spotlight is more then usefull.

shaneblyth · Post by **shaneblyth** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 3:33 am

just leave dashboard empty if you like.. use that utility to disable and spotlight there turns spotlight on and off
Frankly spotlight is awesome if you prefer to use quicksilver instead.. fair enough but it uses no power.. OSX is extremly efficent with resources.. it gobbles up whats free but releases it as i is needed.
You dont mention why you want these things turned off. I am assuming you think you'll get more power available

aqua_tek · Post by **aqua_tek** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:08 am

http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx.html

awesome little tweaker

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:14 pm

Just drag dashboard off the the dock and disable the keycommand in system preferences (dock pane, I think). Problem solved.

Don't disable spotlight.