Remove spotlight icon from menu bar.

remove_sl_icon.sh

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo cp Spotlight Spotlight.bak
sudo perl -pi -e 's|(\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x47\x40\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00)\x42\x40(\x00\x00\x80\x3f\x00\x00\x70\x42)|$1\x00\x00$2|sg' Spotlight
cmp -l Spotlight Spotlight.bak 
sudo codesign -f -s - Spotlight
sudo killall Spotlight

Works great!! Thank you !!!

Not working in Catalina, any idea?

Thank you for your knowledge and work. This is a fantastic non-app it works brilliantly on macOS Mojave 10.14.6. I never, ever use Spotlight it just consumes too many resources and slows everything down just to give the impression of how fast it works, at the cost to all other apps! Anyway, there are perfectly good apps, like 'Find Any File' and 'EasyFind' both free, that do the job better.

i'm on catalina too, any other options for 10.15?

Works perfectly for me in Catalina 10.15.6 (19G2021), thanks!

Spotlight: Operation not permitted
10.15.5 (19F101)
Entered correct password.

@thanhbinh84, I had this, too; you need to remount /System with write privileges: sudo mount -uw / will remount everything as such. I'm pretty sure that SIP must be disabled in order to do this.

How do I undo the effects of this code?

@MrNotch9, in the folder /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS, the script copies Spotlight to Spotlight.bak, and then modifies Spotlight. To reverse the changes, just rename Spotlight.bak back to Spotlight, and then restart Spotlight, e.g.:

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo mv Spotlight Spotlight.modified.bak
sudo mv Spotlight.bak Spotlight
sudo killall Spotlight

I need SIP disabled for this right?

@Mancerrss, yes, SIP must be disabled to modify the contents of /System. Also, see here for an explanation of why sudo mount -uw / is needed once booted on Catalina and later: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/375611

does this disable Spotlight completely or just remove the icon from the menubar? I'd like only to remove the icon but continue using Spotlight as I only ever activate it via keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Space).

@dmattera, the latter; Spotlight remains functional.

works like a charm

if having issues on catalina:::

disable system integrity protection, then reboot

then unmount the drive

sudo mount -uw /

then run the above

@steveaolsen That was already mentioned in the comments before you 🙂

Catalina 10.15.7 work ok