If you have privacy concerns and don’t wish all of your files and folders to to display in Spotlight searches, you can hide them. For example, you might have sensitive information that you don’t want other members of your household to be able to access or perhaps you have certain folders full of extraneous files that you don’t want to see during Spotlight searches. You can hide items from Spotlight searches from the Privacy tab of the Spotlight Preferences window.

You can also hide external disk drives from Spotlight searches as well.

Quick Guide: Exclude File and Folders from Spotlight Searches

1. Choose  > System Preferences from the menu.
2. Click or tab the Spotlight icon in the first row.
3. Click the Privacy tab on top of the window.
   
4. Click the + (plus) symbol on the lower left corner of the window.
5. From the Finder window, navigate to the folder or drive that you wish to exclude.
6. Click Choose.
   
7. To remove something from the Privacy list, select the item and then click the – (minus) symbol.
8. When finished, close the Spotlight window.

Tip: You can also drag items from a Finder window to the Privacy window.

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