Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
To turn off Mission Control, open a Terminal window (open Finder, select the
Applications list, and then in the list of applications double-click Terminal
within the
UTILITIES
folder), and type the following:
DEFAULTS WRITE COM.APPLE.DOCK MCX-EXPOSE-DISABLED -BOOL TRUE;KILLALL DOCK
Note that this technique disables only the main “all windows” mode of Mission
Control. Application Windows mode will still work, which arranges the open
windows of the active program—to use it, switch to an app, and hit
COMMAND
+
DOWN
.
To enable Mission Control again later, type the following:
DEFAULTS DELETE COM.APPLE.DOCK MCX-EXPOSE-DISABLED;KILLALL DOCK
Turning Off Dashboard
The Dashboard is the desktop space that features gadgets. My experience is
that either people love this feature and use it all the time or they entirely
ignore it.
To kill the Dashboard, open a Terminal window, and type the following:
DEFAULTS WRITE COM.APPLE.DASHBOARD MCX-DISABLED -BOOL TRUE;KILLALL DOCK
The changes will take place immediately.
To enable the Dashboard again later, open a Terminal window, and type the
following:
DEFAULTS DELETE COM.APPLE.DASHBOARD MCX-DISABLED;KILLALL DOCK
Disabling Spotlight
You can turn off Spotlight's indexing, which can avoid disk churning and
occasional system slowdowns, but it's not possible to get rid of its desktop
icon—this can be done only through very risky editing of system files, which
I can't condone.
Be aware that Mac App Store relies on Spotlight to discover what apps you
have installed. Therefore, the auto-update functionality of Mac App Store will
no longer work if you disable Spotlight.
However, if in spite of this, you'd still like to turn off Spotlight indexing, open
a Terminal window, and type the following, entering your password when
prompted:
SUDO MDUTIL -A -I OFF
