Remove Spotlight icon from the menu bar
Solution 1
OK just tested this in SL and it worked, icon was removed but spotlight was still working in Finder:
$ cd /System/Library/CoreServices/
$ sudo mv Search.bundle/ Search2.bundle/
Now restart SystemUIServer, the icon is gone, Spotlight still works. To get Spotlight icon back:
$ sudo mv Search2.bundle/ Search.bundle/
And restart SystemUIServer again...
Solution 2
How about doing:
sudo chmod 600 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search
In this way, the Search binary is still read/writable for root and can thus be updated by SoftwareUpdate. Making it non-readable for other users will prevent it from being launched!
Solution 3
Snow Leopard and Leopard handle the Spotlight menu very differently. Under Leopard, the Spotlight menu is an application on its own rights. That application is launched by launchd. The menu may thus easily be disabled by modifying the appropriate launchd configuration file.
Snow Leopard seems to have revered to the Tiger way of running the Spotlight menu. The menu itself lives in /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle . It is automatically loaded by SystemUIServer.app which is also host to menu extras.
While there are preference files allowing us to disable menu extras, I can't seem to find any way to disable Search.bundle
The previously suggested option of renaming Search.bundle does work, but comes at a high risk. A future system update may try to update Search.bundle and end up with a partial bundle file. Thus SystemUIServer will crash trying to load that bundle. To be safe, one would need to restore the bundle before each update. Hardly a desirable solution.
Moreover renaming Search.bundle or removing read rights affects all users on the machine. A per-user preferences as available under Leopard would be preferable.
Solution 4
If you want to still be able to keep all of the functionality of the menu bar spotlight search but have white space for the spotlight in the menu bar you can replace the icon image file with a blank one or your own custom icon. The image file is
/System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/Resources/MDSearchMenuIcon.pdf
Steps:
- Navigate to folder
cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/Resources
- Open folder
open .
- Make copy for backup
- Give yourself read write permission on parent folder and image file
- Open image in Adobe Illustrator
- Modify icon to liking
- Save
- Restart SystemUIServer
killall SystemUIServer
Solution 5
Quick and easy is to use the free utility OnyX.
Also, I'm using LaunchBar set to use a keyboard shortcut for Spotlight search in LaunchBar (set in LB prefs).
This also stops keyboard shortcuts for Spotlight, but not in Finder searching.
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cust0s
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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cust0s over 1 year
How do I remove the Spotlight icon from the Mac OS X menubar?
Note, I don't want to disable Spotlight (I use it). I just want to remove the icon.
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ipatch about 3 yearsdidn't see this link posted in this thread, but this is the route i went. spotlight keyboard shortcut still works for me, more than likely i'll have to reapply after system update, but works on 10.14 idownloadblog.com/2017/02/02/disable-spotlight-remove-menu-bar
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sage han over 13 yearsThis works great for me
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Leonid Shevtsov over 12 yearsJust to confirm - still works in Lion.
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Liam almost 12 yearsBest answer here. Works perfectly in a non-destructive manner. Thanks!
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FLY over 11 yearsafter running this you should do a
killall SystemUIServer
to apply this without rebooting -
Abhishek Saini about 8 yearsDoes this still work? In El Capitan?
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DonielF over 6 yearsDoesn't work in Sierra - "operation not permitted."
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Jan over 5 yearsI get
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search: Operation not permitted
on 10.14 Mojave -
William Entriken over 4 yearsThis approach breaks Command-Space shortcut. To undo this, do
sudo chmod 666 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search
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Miles over 3 yearsThe original permissions on mine were 755
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alper almost 3 yearsEven sudo says:
mv: cannot move 'Search.bundle/' to 'Search2.bundle/': Operation not permitted
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alper almost 3 yearsWhich changes should I make I didn't get it
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alper almost 3 years
chmod: changing permissions of '/System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search': Operation not permitted