How to exclude a file or folder from the Spotlight index on a Mac

Spotlight - Built-in search engine Mac OS X, one of the core system services. If you want to exclude from the Spotlight index file or folder, usually advised to drag the required objects in the Spotlight window exception settings in the system settings. This method also allows you to easily manage settings, but there is an alternative, which means the index management with a special extension in the name of the document or folder.

We are talking about the suffix .noindex, and its use is quite obvious. Just rename an object by adding an extension and Spotlight will exclude it from the index of sites to find on your Mac.

For example, «Home video» folder will be indexed and displayed in the Spotlight search results as usual, but the «Home video.noindex» not only will not be indexed, but the search results will also remove all its content.

On the one hand, the use of the first method (through the Spotlight system settings) does not change the way the names of folders and files, but on the other, the second variant (with renaming) allows to adjust Spotlight behavior rules using scripting or through Terminal.