Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

eclecticlight.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 118 posts

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#31

Post by ryandrake »

spijdar wrote: post #20
lapcat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable SIP

What sucks is that you can't disable SIP without _also_ disabling disk encryption ("FileVault"), because Apple changed from full disk encryption to only encrypting user data, and relying on SIP and crypto hashes to protect the system partition. Therefore, you can't "safely" disable SIP, as you'd be able to boot into recovery mode and perform an evil maid attack. This is really irritating, both that: - I can't "accept…

I know the writing has been on the wall for a while but as a former fanboy, I just didn't see it. When SIP was released, it was my first "ah ha" wake-up call that Apple is no longer building software for me. Ten years later, it's still getting worse. This idea that the owner of the computer is not the ultimate authority over what is running on that computer is slowly seeping its way into macOS and with every release it seems to get worse. That and the ecosystem of apps that abandon you if you're running N minus 3 or earlier macOS.

I'm finally starting to de-Applify my home computing and slowly removing my and my family's dependence on the Apple ecosystem. Replacing an old Mac Mini here, replacing an old MacBook there. It's been a long time coming, but I'm out.

I'm not even mentioning Tahoe which is a disaster but doesn't bother me because I don't have a single machine that can run anything past Ventura anyway.

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#32

Post by lapcat »

spijdar wrote: post #20
lapcat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable SIP

What sucks is that you can't disable SIP without _also_ disabling disk encryption ("FileVault"), because Apple changed from full disk encryption to only encrypting user data, and relying on SIP and crypto hashes to protect the system partition. Therefore, you can't "safely" disable SIP, as you'd be able to boot into recovery mode and perform an evil maid attack. This is really irritating, both that: - I can't "accept…

You appear to be confusing System Integrity Protection with the Signed System Volume. FileVault works fine with SIP disabled. But you can't disable SSV without disabling FileVault.

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#33

Post by Citizen8396 »

ryantuck wrote: post #11

Went down this rabbit hole a few months ago seeing whether it was at all possible to disable the automatic OCR / processing of all image files on macOS. Wasn't able to figure out how to do so but this blog was absolutely the best resource for digging one layer deeper on all things Spotlight-related, highly recommend.

Haven't tested this, but try:

System Settings > General > Language & Region > Live Text

"Select text in images to copy or take action."

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#34

Post by spijdar »

lapcat wrote: post #32
spijdar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sucks is that you can't disable SIP without _also_ disabling disk encryption ("FileVault"), because Apple changed from full disk encryption to only encrypting user data, and relying on SIP and crypto hashes to protect the system partition. Therefore, you can't "safely" disable SIP, as you'd be able to boot into recovery mode and perform an evil maid attack. This is really irritating, both that: - I can't "accept…

You appear to be confusing System Integrity Protection with the Signed System Volume. FileVault works fine with SIP disabled. But you can't disable SSV without disabling FileVault.

Yes, this is true! I was thinking about "disabling SIP" in the sense of being able to modify the system to e.g. disable the Spotlight launchd service. My mistake.

But still -- you can't "unlock" the system (in this sense) without disabling SSV, which requires disabling FileVault.

(Unless I'm wrong about that too, and there is a way to disable Spotlight without disabling SSV)

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#35

Post by vosper »

kruuuder wrote: post #7

I understand the desire to disable Siri system-wide, but Spotlight? How else are you going to find your files? I'm often annoyed how slow/unreliable Spotlight is, especially in Mail, but what's the alternative here?

Spotlight is much improved in Tahoe - faster and with better results.

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#36

Post by Telemakhos »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #25

A small but big detail that irritates me is one used to be able to search Applications faster through the dedicated Applications overlay, but now this behavior appears to just be a shortcut to Spotlight, which suffers from incredibly poor index planning. In the past, when Spotlight was too slow to show me my most used applications by the first few letters, I'd bail and use Applications. Now I'd have to use Finder, bu…

On the other side of the fence, I enjoy the new Spotlight-for-Applications that opens when I hit the touch bar key (I still have an M1) for the old Launchpad. It seems to sort programs by frequency, so it knows that I open Ghostty far more often than Ghostery, and typing "Gh" will bring me to Ghostty instead of Ghostery. In the old Launchpad, applications were always presented alphabetically when you began typing, so Ghostery always was selected instead of Ghostty. I had to type "gh" right key enter before, but now just I just hit "gh" enter.

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#37

Post by lapcat »

spijdar wrote: post #34
lapcat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to be confusing System Integrity Protection with the Signed System Volume. FileVault works fine with SIP disabled. But you can't disable SSV without disabling FileVault.

Yes, this is true! I was thinking about "disabling SIP" in the sense of being able to modify the system to e.g. disable the Spotlight launchd service. My mistake. But still -- you can't "unlock" the system (in this sense) without disabling SSV, which requires disabling FileVault. (Unless I'm wrong about that too, and there is a way to disable Spotlight without disabling SSV)

You don't need to modify the system volume. Once SIP is disabled, you can then use standard launchctl commands to disable system launchd jobs.

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#38

Post by jama211 »

wpm wrote: post #5

It's a shame Apple has decided that if the launch agent or daemon lives in the System folder that means the user/admin should have zero control over it. I should be able to disable any launchd job on my computer end of story.

You’re very entitled to your opinion, but it should be fairly obvious why this isn’t reasonable from their perspective. Put another way, let’s just say I think apple is glad you’re not making decisions about how their operating system should work. It’s an OS built for users, not those who wish to have iron control over everything. Allowing that would be disastrous for most users just to appease the very small percentage who’d want that.

Re: Can You Disable Spotlight and Siri in macOS Tahoe?

#39

Post by walterbell »

Apple Configurator MDM profiles can control Siri behavior, e.g.

https://github.com/jankais3r/Siri-NoLoggingPLS

  Disable server-side logging of Siri requests for your Mac, iPhone and iPad
You can disable Siri (and Apple Intelligence) entirely via Apple Configurator or asking the nearest LLM for .mobileconfig file with:

  allowAssistant
Post reply on HN