mdutil Command Examples

Manage the metadata stores used by Spotlight for indexing. More information: https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/mdutil.1.html.

• Show the indexing status of the startup volume:

mdutil -s {{/}}

• Turn on/off the Spotlight indexing for a given volume:

mdutil -i {{on|off}} {{path/to/volume}}

• Turn on/off indexing for all volumes:

mdutil -a -i {{on|off}}

• Erase the metadata stores and restart the indexing process:

mdutil -E {{path/to/volume}}