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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1154 is a reply to message #1153] |
Sun, 14 March 2021 13:11   |
CTM info
Messages: 179
Registered: September 2009
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Senior Member |
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Hello Stefan,
There are no interactions between your Spotlight privacy settings and FoxTrot - we do NOT use Spotlight for searching, to be clear !
The reason we have a setting in FoxTrot to disable Spotlight was for allowing to gain performance (this disables Spotlight's background indexing, which does take a bit of CPU although that was more of a concern in the earlier days of FoxTrot) AND save disk space, since no Spotlight index is needed if you use FoxTrot for your searches.
Finally, FoxTrot Search offers similar privacy settings allowing you to exclude certain directories from your index.
Hope this helps.
Kind regards,
jean michel/ctm qa
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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1155 is a reply to message #1154] |
Sun, 14 March 2021 13:21 |
stephan
Messages: 7
Registered: March 2021
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Junior Member |
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Thanks Michel for your answer, but it still do not understand:
1. Both settings should do the same as per my understanding, namely define specific folder to be excluded from Spotlight indexing (at least this is what I understand as per your explanations regarding Foxtrot).
2. Since the 2 settings actually contradict (per default nothing is excluded for indexing by Finder, but my user folder is being excluded by Foxtrot), I still ask which of the 2 settings is effective.
3. Is it a Foxtrot default setting that the user folder is excluded from Spotlight indexing? Does this actually mean that Spotlight e.g. does not index my mail?
Cheers
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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1156 is a reply to message #1155] |
Sun, 14 March 2021 13:34 |
CTM info
Messages: 179
Registered: September 2009
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Senior Member |
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Hello again,
No, both settings do NOT perform the same action. What you set in FoxTrot only conditions what you exclude in FoxTrot Indexing; what you exclude in Spotlight conditions what is excluded from Spotlight indexing.
To simplify things for you, as your main volume seems to have Spotlight indexing disabled, I suggest you disable it for your other volume as well, and forget about Spotlight's exclusion setting - this way you can focus on FoxTrot's settings exclusively. Again, we do NOT use Spotlight to perform our searches, FoxTrot is based on its own technology for this.
Regards,
jean michel/ctm qa
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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1157 is a reply to message #1156] |
Sun, 14 March 2021 14:03 |
stephan
Messages: 7
Registered: March 2021
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Junior Member |
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Hi Michel,
I do not follow your answer: "What you set in FoxTrot only conditions what you exclude in FoxTrot Indexing; what you exclude in Spotlight conditions what is excluded from Spotlight indexing." Because, the FoxTrot "Spotlight" settings clearly states in the note: "If you disable the Spotlight index, Spotlight will continue to search by file name only (from the menu bar or from the Finder's search field), and Apple Mail will only be searchable through FoxTrot."
->So this "Spotlight" setting within Foxtrot defines the scope of indexed locations by Spotlight, at least the Note in the Foxtrot settings says so.
->& this is exactly the same functionality as the one offered in the Spotlight settings of MacOS (please see in the screenshots provided) where folders can be excluded from Spotlight indexing
->In other words, there are 2 settings in which the folders excluded by Spotlight can be managed, namely the one in MacOS Spotlight, and the Spotlight settings in Foxtrot.
When you write, my main volume seems to have Spotlight indexing disabled, this is not what is shown in the screenshots. In the screenshots it shows that nothing is excluded as per the MacOS settings, while my user directory is excluded as per Foxtrot's spotlight settings (but not the entire volume).
Which other Volume do you mean? I only have one Volume.
I certainly understand that Foxtrot does not use Spotlight to perform the searches, but that was not my question.
My questions were/are:
1. With both the Finder and Foxtrot offering settings which folders being excluded by Spotlight, and since they seem to contradict by default settings, which of the 2 settings is now the effective one?
2. Since I do not want to have anything excluded from Spotlight search, what do I have to do? Most likely I will have to change the default Foxtrot Spotlight setting an enable my user folder for Spotlight indexing - is this correct?
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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1159 is a reply to message #1158] |
Sun, 14 March 2021 17:14 |
stephan
Messages: 7
Registered: March 2021
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Junior Member |
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Hi Michel,
This is understood. The point Is that the finder offers exactly the same setting ( https://support.apple.com/de-ch/guide/mac-help/mchlp2811/mac) and the 2 settings were different on my computer (see also my screenshots): The setting in Spotlight shows that my main user folder was excluded from Spotlight indexing, while the setting in AppleOS did not.
As you wrote earlier, this feature was introduced to gain performance by avoiding a double-indexing. The point is, I cannot remember having excluded my user folder from indexing under this setting in Foxtrot; so this seems to be a default setting becoming effective after the Foxtrot installation, which has caused Spotlight not to index my main user folder anymore, with the result that emails were no longer properly indexed in the mail application. And since the this exclusion does not show up when checking the standard MacOS Spotlight indexing setting, it was hard to notice why Spotlight was no longer indexing everything e.g. the mails.
Hope you can follow my thoughts and now understand the confusion and issues this has caused.
Kind regards,
Stephan
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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1160 is a reply to message #1159] |
Mon, 15 March 2021 10:36 |
FoxTrot Engineering
Messages: 406
Registered: April 2020
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Senior Member |
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Spotlight has a hidden setting (a Terminal.app command line: mdutil) to disable indexing for a whole volume (drive). We made this setting visible in FoxTrot's preferences, so you can avoid double-indexing your data, which is CPU intensive and can waste precious disk space.
Independently from that, Spotlight has a System Preference setting to disable searching some locations (folders). It is not clear to me if disabling searching there actually disables indexing (saving disk space and CPU usage) or not. This may depend whether you put folders or whole volumes in this list.
I can't tell what is Spotlight's default behavior regarding volumes; it certainly depends of their kind (internal drive, ejectable drive, network drive…) and filesystem. I don't know either how it behaves with encrypted volumes, maybe the volume itself may be unindexed, while Spotlight actually indexes the data inside the encrypted envelope?
FoxTrot does not disable Spotlight indexing without your consent (this requires your admin password).
Jérôme - FoxTrot Engineering
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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1161 is a reply to message #1160] |
Mon, 15 March 2021 14:54 |
stephan
Messages: 7
Registered: March 2021
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Junior Member |
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Hello Jerômé,
thank you very much for your explanations. I tried to get full transparency on the Spotlight index locations with a Terminal command, but that seems to be something that is no longer available in macOS BigSur.
One thing still puzzles me: why did Foxtrot indicate that the Spotlight index is not enabled for my user directory, since you mention that this is not automatically changed by Foxtrot. The macOS was a clean install, and I don't assume macOS excludes the user folder from indexing by default. I have now changed this in Foxtrot.
Kind regards,
Stephan
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| Re: Interaction in the settings between macOS and Foxtrot regarding folders excluded from Spotlight [message #1162 is a reply to message #1161] |
Mon, 15 March 2021 16:06 |
FoxTrot Engineering
Messages: 406
Registered: April 2020
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Senior Member |
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FoxTrot displays the result of the mdutil -s command line, for each user-visible volume; whether this command work correctly or not on macOS 11 is beyond my knowledge.
User-writable data is now (macOS 11) stored on a distinct volume, as the boot volume is now read-only; but this is hidden to the the user, who sees a unified virtual volume containing things stored on either the system volume or the data volume. Maybe mdutil reports unexpected values because of this? Anyway, if you did not disable Spotlight indexing from FoxTrot's preferences (entering your admin password), then FoxTrot can't have altered Spotlight indices. Or, if you have successfully disabled it from FoxTrot's preference pane, then re-enabling it should also work, as far as I know.
Jérôme - FoxTrot Engineering
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